THE 

PHYSIOLOGY  AND  PATHOLOGY  OF  THE  MIND. 


OF  THE  MIND. 


BJf 


HENRY    MAUDSLEY,    M.D.   LOND. 

H 

PHYSICIAN  TO   THE  WEST  LONDON  HOSPITAL; 

HONORARY  MEMBER  OF   THE  MEDICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL  SOCIETY  OF  PARIS; 

FORMERLY  RESIDENT  PHYSICIAN  OF  THE  MANCHESTER 

ROYAL  LUNATIC  HOSPITAL,    ETC. 


NEW   YOEK: 
D.    APPLE  TON    AND    COMPANY, 

443    &    445    BROADWAY. 
1867. 


fef 


..v\ 


PBEFACE, 


THE  aim  which  I  have  had  in  view  throughout  this  work 
has  been  twofold:  first,  to  treat  of  mental  phenomena  from 
a  physiological  rather  than  from  a  metaphysical  point  of 
view ;  and,  secondly,  to  bring  the  manifold  instructive  in- 
stances presented  by  the  unsound  mind  to  bear  upon  the 
interpretation  of  the  obscure  problems  of  mental  science. 
Indeed  it  has  been  my  desire  to  do  what  I  could  in 
order  to  put  a  happy  end  to  the  "  inauspicious  divorce " 
between  the  Physiology  and  Pathology  of  Mind,  and  to  effect 
a  reconciliation  between  these  two  branches  of  the  same 
science.  When  I  first  applied  myself,  upwards  of  ten  years 
since,  to  the  practical  study  of  insanity,  having  laid  up  before- 
hand some  store  of  metaphysical  philosophy,  it  was  no  small 
surprise  and  discouragement  to  find,  on  the  one  hand,  that 
the  theoretical  knowledge  acquired  had  no  bearing  whatever 
on,  no  discoverable  relation  to,  the  facts  that  daily  came 
under  observation,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  that  writers  on 
mental  diseases,  while  giving  the  fullest  information  concern- 
ing them,  treated  their  subject  as  if  it  belonged  to  a  science 
entirely  distinct  from  that  which  was  concerned  with  the 
Eound  mind.  This  state  of  things  could  not  fail  to  produce 


vi  PREPACK 

an  immediate  mental  disquietude,  and  ultimately  to  give 
rise  to  the 'endeavour  on  my  part  to  arrive  at  some  definite 
conviction  with  regard  to  the  physical  conditions  of  mental 
function,  and  the  relation  of  the  phenomena  of  the  sound 
and  unsound  mind.  Of  that  endeavour  the  present  work  is 
the  result.  It  can  claim  no  more  authority  than  what  is  due 
to  a  sincere  purpose  faithfully  pursued,  and  to  such  truth  as 
may  he  contained  in  it.  The  First  Part,  resting  as  it  does 
mainly  on  the  physiological  method  of  inquiry  into  mental 
phenomena,  will  certainly  not  command  the  assent  of  those 
who  put  entire  faith  in  the  psychological  method  of  interro- 
gating self-consciousness;  it  must  appeal  rather  to  those  who 
have  made  themselves  acquainted  with  the  latest  advances 
in  physiology,  and  with  the  present  state  of  physiological 
psychology  in  Germany,  and  who  are  familiar  with  the  writ- 
ings of  such  as  Professor  Bain,  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  Dr. 
Laycock,  and  Dr.  Carpenter,  in  this  country.  The  Second  Part 
of  the  book  may  stand  on  its  own  account  as  a  treatise  on 
the  causes,  varieties,  pathology,  and  treatment  of  mental 
diseases,  apart  from  all  question  of  the  proper  method  to 
be  pursued  in  the  investigation  of  mental  phenomena.  Even 
those  who  advocate  the  psychological  method  of  interrogating 
self-consciousness  do  not  insist  on  the  application  of  it  to 
the  scientific  study  of  the  madman's  mind. 

In  laying  down  the  plan  of  this  work,  and  in  thus  entering 
upon  a  task  not  before  systematically  attempted,  I  could  not 
fail  to  experience  the  serious  disadvantage,  not  only  of  having 
no  guide  to  follow,  but  of  being  compelled  by  the  scope  of  the 
work  to  deviate  from  the  paths  already  made  in  metaphysics, 
physiology,  and  pathology  respectively.  In  order  to  bring 
the  results  of  the  cultivation  of  these  different  branches  of 
science  into  any  sort  of  harmony,  it  was  plainly  necessary 
not  to  travel  too  far  on  paths  which  diverged  more  and  more 
with  every  step  forward.  For  this  reason  I  have  passed  by 


PREFACE.  vii 

many  interesting  questions  which  have  long  occupied  a  large 
space  in  metaphysics,  and  have  deliberately  omitted  many 
discussions  which  were  at  one  time  intended  to  form  a  part 
of  the  book.  In  like  manner,  it  seemed  desirable,  when  treat- 
ing of  the  physiology  of  mental  action,  to  omit  anatomical 
description  of  the  nervous  system,  leaving  the  knowledge  of 
it  to  be  obtained  in  a  more  complete  and  satisfactory  form 
from  books  specially  dealing  with  the  subject.  Lastly,  the 
pathology  of  diseases  of  the  nervous  system  generally,  although 
throwing  much  light  on  the  pathology  of  mental  diseases, 
could  not  find  fitting  place,  and  was  after  some  hesitation 
sacrificed,  in  order  to  preserve  the  harmony  of  design,  and 
to  prevent  the  book  growing  to  an  immoderate  bulk.  Indeed, 
as  may  easily  be  conceived,  it  has  been  throughout  far  more 
difficult  to  determine  what  to  leave  out  than  what  to  put  in, 
the  proportion  of  material  collected  for  the  purposes  of  the 
project,  but  not  directly  used,  exceeding  that  which  has  been 
actually  used  in  its  execution.  I  am  fully  sensible  of  the 
disadvantages  resulting  from  these  omissions :  an  amount  of 
knowledge  on  the  reader's  part  is  taken  for  granted  which  he 
may  not  have,  and  without  which  many  things  may  appear 
obscure  to  him,  and  many  assertions  unwarrantable.  It  may 
well  be,  too,  that  either  the  metaphysician,  or  the  physiologist, 
or  the  pathologist,  looking  at  the  work  from  his  particular 
standpoint,  will  see  reason  to  pronounce  it  defective.  "Whoso- 
ever will,  however,  be  at  the  pains  to  compare  the  discordant 
results  of  metaphysical,  physiological,  and  pathological  studies 
of  mind,  remembering  that  they  are  actually  concerned  with 
the  same  subject-matter,  cannot  fail  to  recognise  and  con- 
fess the  uselessness  of  an  exclusive  method,  and  the  pressing 
need  of  combined  action  and  of  a  more  philosophical  mode 
of  proceeding.  If  the  work  now  offered  to  the  public  be 
successful  in  its  aim,  it  will  make  evident  how  indispensable 


viii  PREFACE. 

is  the  method  advocated,  and  how  full  it  is  of  promise  of  the 
most  fruitful  results. 

In  conclusion,  I  am  glad  to  add  a  sincere  expression  of  thanks 
to  my  friend  Dr.  Blandford,  for  his  advice  and  assistance 
during  the  passage  of  the  book  through  the  press. 

THE  LAWN,  HANWELI^  W. 
Feb.  5th,  1867. 


CONTENTS. 
PART  I. 

THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  MIND. 
CHAPTER  I. 

OX  THE  METHOD  OF  THE  .STUDY  OF  MIND. 

Aspects  of  nature  terrible  to  man  in  the  infancy  of  thought ;  whence  supersti- 
tions feelings  and  fancies  regarding  nature.  As  these  disappear  metaphysical 
entities  are  assigned  as  natural  causes,  and  man  deems  himself  the  "  measure 
of  the  universe."  Finally,  the  interrogation  and  interpretation  of  nature, 
after  the  inductive  method,  begin ;  fruitful  results  of  this  method.  Is  the 
inductive  method,  objectively  applied,  available  for  the  study  of  Mind? 
Difficulties  in  the  way  of  such  application.  Development  of  biography,  and 
absence  of  any  progress  in  metaphysics  are  evidence  of  its-value.  Psychological 
method  of  interrogating  self-consciousness  palpably  inadequate  ;  contradictory 
results  of  its  use,  and  impossibility  of  applying  it  inductively.  Self-conscious- 
ness unreliable  in  the  information  which  it  does  give,  and  incompetent  to  give 
any  account  of  a  large  part  of  mental  activity  :  gives  no  account  of  the  mental 
phenomena  of  the  infant,  of  the  uncultivated  adult,  and  of  the  insane ;  no 
account  of  the  bodily  conditions  which  underlie  every  mental  manifestation  ; 
no  account  of  the  large  field  of  unconscious  mental  action  exhibited,  not  only 
in  the  unconscious  assimilation  of  impressions,  but  in  the  registration  of  ideas 
and  their  associations,  in  their  latent  existence  and  influence  when  not  active, 
and  in  their  recall  into  activity ;  and  no  account  of  the  influence  organically 
exerted  upon  the  brain  by  other  organs  of  the  body.  Incompetency  of  self- 
consciousness  further  displayed  by  examination  of  its  real  nature.  Physiology 
cannot  any  longer  be  ignored  ;  henceforth  necessary  to  associate  the  Physiolo- 
gical with  the  Psychological  method.  The  study  of  the  plan  of  development 
of  Mind,  the  study  of  its  forms  of  degeneration,  and  the  study  of  its  progress 
and  regress,  as  exhibited  in  history,  should  not  be  neglected.  The  union  of 
empirical  and  rational  faculties,  really  advocated  by  Bacon  as  his  method,  is 
strictly  applicable  to  the  investigation  of  mental  as  of  other  natural  pheno- 
mena. The  question  of  relative  value  of  inductive  or  deductive  reasoning 
often  a  question  of  the  capacity  of  him  who  uses  it ;  difference  between  genius 
and  mediocrity. — Conclusion .  Page  1 — 37 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE  MIND  AND  THE  NERVOUS  SYSTEM. 

The  term  "  Mind"  used  in  different  senses  ;  in  its  scientific  sense  as  a  natural 
force ;  and  in  its  popular  sense  as  an  abstraction  made  into  a  metaphysical 
entity.  The  brain  certainly  the  organ  of  the  Mind,  and  the  nervous  cells  the 
immediate  agents  of  mental  function.  Mental  power  an  organized  result  in 
the  proper  centres — a  mputal  organization.  No  nerve  in  lowest  animal  forms ; 
perception  of  stimulus  being  the  direct  physical  effect  in  a  homogeneous  sub- 
stance. The  differentiation  of  tissues  in  higher  animals  demands  special 
means  of  intercommunication  ;  the  nervous  system,  at  first  very  simple,  sub- 


x  CONTENTS. 

serving  this  function.  With  increasing  complexity  of  organization,  a  corre- 
sponding complexity  of  the  nervous  system.  Organs  of  special  senses  appear 
in  very  rudimentary  form  at  first ;  corresponding  central  nervous  ganglia 
constitute  entire  brain  in  Invertebrata.  Kudiinents  of  cerebral  hemispheres 
and  rudimentary  ideation  in  fishes.  Convolution  of  the  grey  matter  of  the 
hemispheres  in  the  higher  mammals,  and  corresponding  increase  of  intelli- 
gence in  them.  Differences  in  the  size  of  the  brain,  and  in  the  complexity  of 
its  convolutions,  in  different  races  of  men,  and  in  different  individuals  of  the 
same  race ;  corresponding  differences  in  intellectual  development.  Human 
embryonic  development  conforms  with  general  plan  of  development  of  Verte- 
brata.  Discrimination  of  nervous  centres  :  (a)  primary,  or  Ideational ;  (b) 
secondary,  or  Sensorial ;  (c)  tertiary,  or  Keflex ;  (d)  quaternary,  or  Organic. 
The  evidence  of  the  different  functions  of  these  centres  is  anatomical,  physio- 
logical, experimental,  and  pathological.  Discriminating  observation  of 
mental  phenomena  necessary,  and  metaphysical  conception  of  Mind  no  longer 
tenable.  Mind  the  most  dependent  of  all  the  natural  forces ;  relations  of 
mental  force  in  nature.  Concluding  remarks Page  38 — 62 

CHAPTER  III. 

THE.  SPINAL  CORD  AND  BEFLEX  ACTION. 

Spinal  cord  contains  the  nervous  centres  of  many  reflex  or  automatic  movements. 
Earliest  movements  of  infant  are  reflex  ;  automatic  acts  of  anencephalic  infant 
and  of  decapitated  frog.  Analysis  of  Pfliiger's  experiments  on  the  frog.  So- 
called  design  of  an  act  not  necessarily  evidence  of  consciousness.  Spinal  cord 
the  centre  of  many  acquired  or  secondary  automatic  movements  ;  illustrations. 
The  motor  faculties  mostly  acquired  in  man  by  education  and  exercise,  but 
innate  in  many  animals.  Bearing  of  instances  of  acquired  adaptation  of  means 
to  end  on  the  doctrine  of  final  causes.  Motor  faculties  are  exhausted  by  exer- 
cise, and  require  periodical  rest  for  restoration  of  power  by  nutrition.  Quan- 
titative and  qualitative  relation  of  reaction  to  the  impression.  Hereditary 
transmission  of  acquired  faculties  implants  the  germ  of  innate  endowment. 
Pfliiger's  laws  of  reflex  movements.  Causes  of  disorder  of  function  of  spinal 
cord  :  (a)  original  differences  of  constitution  ;  (b)  excessive  action ;  (c)  quantity 
and  quality  of  the  blood  ;  (d)  excentric  irritation  ;  (e)  interruption  of  its  con- 
nexion with  the  brain.  Close  sympathy  between  different  parts  of  the  nervous 
system.  Clear  conceptions  of  the  functions  of  spinal  centres  indispensable  to 
the  study  of  the  functions  of  the  higher  nervous  centres  .  .  .  Page  63 — 86 

CHAPTER  17. 

THE  SENSORY  CENTRES  AND  SENSATION. 

Collections  of  grey  matter  constituting  the  sensory  ganglia  intervene  between  the 
spinal  centres  and  the  supreme  hemispherical  ganglia.  Anatomical  relations 
of  different  grey  nuclei  yet  xiucertain,  but  nerve-fibres  certainly  connected  with 
their  cells.  Sensory  ganglia  with  connected  motor  nuclei  the  centres  of  inde- 
pendent reaction — of  sensori-motor  movements  :  examples.  Sensations  not 
innate  in  man,  but  acquired  by  gradual  formation  ;  difference  between  him 
and  the  animals  in  this  regard.  The  idea  of  organization  necessaiy  to  the 
just  interpretation  of  sensation  ;  assimilation  and  differentiation.  Association 
of  sensations.  Sensori-motor  acts  both  irregular  and  co-ordinate  ;  of  co- 
ordinate acts,  some  are  primary  automatic,  others  secondary  automatic. 
Persistence  of  sensori-motor  acts  in  animals  after  the  removal  of  their  cerebral 
hemispheres.  Acquired  sensori-motor  acts  constitute  a  great  part  of  the  daily 
action  of  life  ;  illustrations.  Psychological  view  of  sensation  at  variance  with 
physiological  facts.  Subordination  of  the  sensory  centres  to  the  cerebral 
ganglia.  Causes  of  disorder  of  the  sensory  ganglia :  (a)  original  defects  ; 
(b)  excessive  stimulation  ;  (c)  quantity  and  quality  of  blood  ;  (d)  reflex  irrita- 
tion ;  (e)  influence  of  cerebral  hemispheres  (?).  Concluding  remarks  on  the 
analogy  between  the  functions  of  the  sensory  centres  and  of  the  spinal 
centres Page  87—105 


CONTENTS.  si 

CHAPTER  Y, 

THE  SUPREME  CEREBRAL  CENTRES  AND  IDEATION. 

Cortical  cells  of  the  hemispheres  the  centres  of  Ideation.  ]STo  certain  know- 
ledge of  the  functions  of  different  convolutions.  Cortical  cells  the  centres  of 
independent  reaction  ;  of  ideomotor  movements,  which  may  take  place  without 
will  and  without  consciousness  ;  illustrations.  Notion  of  innate  idea  unten- 
able. Idea  a  gradual  organization.  Different  signification  of  an  idea  according 
to  different  states  of  culture.  The  so-called  fundamental  or  universal  in- 
tuitions. Different  modes  of  action  of  idea :  (a)  on  movements,  voluntary 
and  involuntary,  conscious  and  unconscious  ;  (b)  on  the  sensoiy  ganglia, — 
physiologically,  as  a  regular  part  of  mental  function ;  pathologically,  in  the 
production  of  hallucinations  ;  (c)  on  the  functions  of  nutrition  and  secretion: 
illustrations ;  (d)  on  other  ideas  :  reflection  or  deliberation.  Relation  of 
consciousness  to  Ideational  activity.  Comparison  of  ideas  with  movements  in 
regard  to  their  association,  their  relation  to  consciousness,  and  the  limited 
power  which  the  mind  has  over  them.  The  character  of  the  particular  asso- 
ciation of  Ideas  determined  by  (a)  the  individual  nature,  (b)  special  life- 
experience.  Need  of  an  individual  psychology.  General  laws  of  association 
of  ideas.  Concluding  remarks  on  the  illustration  of  Von  Baer's  law  of  progress, 
from  the  general  to  the  special  in  development,  afforded  by  the  development 
of  ideas Page  106—128 

CHAPTER  VI. 

ON  EMOTION. 

Relation  of  emotion  to  idea.  Influence  of  the  state  of  nerve-element  on  emotion. 
Idea  favourable  to  self-expansion  is  agreeable  ;  an  idea  opposed  to  self-expan- 
sion disagreeable.  Appetite  or  desire  for  agreeable  stimulus,  and  repulsion  or 
avoidance  of  a  painful  one,  as  motives  of  action.  Equilibrium  between  indi- 
vidual and  his  surroundings  not  accompanied  with  desire.  Intellectual  life 
does  not  furnish  the  impulses  to  action,  but  the  desires  do.  Character  of 
emotion  determined  by  the  nature  of  external  stimulus,  and  by  the  condition 
of  nerve-element,  original,  or  as  modified  by  culture.  Ccenaesthesis.  Nervous 
centres  of  ideas  and  emotions  the  same  :  emotions  as  many  and  various  as 
ideas.  Psychical  lone;  how  determined  ?  The  conception  of  the  ego  and  the 
moral  sense.  Intimate  connexion  of  emotion  with  the  organic  life  ;  illustra- 
tion of  their  reciprocal  influence.  Primitive  passions,  according  to  Spinoza. 
Difficulties  of  the  psychological  method  of  studying  emotion.  Hereditary 
action  in  the  improvement  of  human  feeling.  Law  of  progress  from  the 
general  to  the  special,  exhibited  in  the  development  of  the  emotions. 

Page  129—145 

CHAPTER  VII. 

ON  VOLITION. 

The  will  not  a  single,  undecomposable  faculty  of  uniform  power,  but  varies  as  its 
cause  varies  :  differs  in  quantity  and  quality,  according  to  the  preceding  reflec- 
tion. According  to  the  common  view  of  it,  an  abstraction  is  made  into  a 
metaphysical  entity.  Self-consciousness  reveals  the  particular  state  of  mind 
of  the  moment,  but  not  the  long  series  of  causes  on  which  it  depends  ;  hence 
the  opinion  of  free-will.  Examples  from  madman,  drunkard,  &c.  The 
design  in  the  particular  volition  is  a  result  of  a  gradually  effected  mental 
organization  :  a  physical  necessity,  not  transcending  or  anticipating,  but  con- 
forming with,  experience.  Erroneous  notions  as  to  the  autocratic  power  of 
will.  Its  actual  power  considered  (1)  over  movements,  and  (2)  over  the 
mental  operations.  1.  Over  movements  :  (a)  no  power  over  the  involuntary 
movements  essential  to  life  ;  (b)  no  power  to  effect  voluntary  movements 
until  they  have  been  acquired  by  practice  ;  (c)  cannot  control  the  means,  can 
only  will  the  event.  2.  Over  mental  operations  :  (a)  the  formation  of  ideas, 
and  of  their  associations  independent  of  it ;  (b)  its  impotency  in  the  early  stages 
of  mental  development — in  the  young  child  and  in  the  savage  ;  (c)  cannot  call 
np  a  particular  train  of  thought,  or  dismiss  a  train  of  thought,  except  through 


xii  CONTENTS. 

associations  of  ideas  that  are  beyond  its  control,  and  sometimes  not  at  all.  As 
many  centres  of  volitional  reaction  in  the  brain  as  there  are  centres  of  ideas. 
Volition  built  up  from  residua  of  previous  volitions  of  a  like 'kind.  To  the 
freest  action  of  the  will  there  are  necessary  an  unimpeded  association  of  ideas 
and  a  strong  personality.  Character  not  determined  by  the  will^but  deter- 
mining it  in  the  particular  act.  Relation  of  emotion  to  volition.  "Will  the 
highest  force  in  nature  ;  its  highest  function  creative — initiating  a  new 
development  of  nature Page  146 — 166 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

ON  ACTUATION. 

Movements  leave  behind  them  residua  in  the  motor  centres,  whence  a  repository 
of  latent  or  abstract  movements.  Motor  residua  or  intuitions  intervene  be- 
tween motive  and  act,  and  are  related  to  conception  on  the  reactive  side  as 
sensation  is  on  the  receptive  side.  A  ctuation  proposed  for  the  psychological 
designation  of  this  department.  Motor  intuitions  mostly  innate  in  animals, 
acquired  in  man.  Illustrations  from  vision,  speech,  the  phenomena  of  hypno- 
tism, paralysis,  insanity,  &c.  Muscular  hallucinations.  Co-ordinate  convul- 
sions. The  muscular  sense  ;  its  relation  to  the  motor  intuitions,  and  the 
necessary  part  which  it  plays  in  mental  function.  The  will  acts  upon  muscles 
indirectly  through  the  motor  nervous  centres.  Orderly  subordination  of  ner- 
vous centres  in  the  expression  of  the  will  in  action.  Natural  differences 
between  different  persons,  in  the  power  of  expression,  by  speech  or  otherwise. 

Page  167— 181 

CHAPTER  IX. 

ON  MEMORY  AND   IMAGINATION. 

Memory  exists  in  every  organic  element  of  the  body — an  organic  registration  of 
impressions.  No  memory  of  what  we  have  not  had  experience,  and  no  expe- 
rience ever  entirely  forgotten.  Physiological  ideas  of  assimilation  and  differen- 
tiation necessary  to  the  interpretation  of  its  phenomena.  Power  of  imagina- 
tion built  up  by  the  assimilation  not  only  of  the  like  in  ideas,  but  also  of  the 
relations  of  ideas.  Its  productive  or  creative  power  is,  in  its  highest  display, 
involuntary  and  unconscious  :  it  is  the  supreme  manifestation  of  organic 
evolution.  Relation  of  memory  to  imagination.  The  action  of  imagination. 
Differences  in  the  character  of  memory  in  different  persons.  Manifold  dis- 
orders to  which  memory  is  liable.  The  memory  of  early  youth  and  of  old 
age.  No  exact  memory  of  pain  :  why? Page  182 — 194 


PART  II. 

THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  MIND. 
CHAPTER  I. 

ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY. 

Concurrence  of  causes  in  the  production  of  Insanity.  Moral  and  physical  causes 
cannot  be  exactly  discriminated.  Predisposing  causes  :  the  influence  of  civili- 
zation ;  over-population  and  the  struggle  for  existence  ;  over-crowding  and 
insanitary  conditions ;  eager  pursuit  of  wealth,  and  deterioration  of  the 
moral  nature  ;  sex  ;  education  ;  religion  ;  condition  of  life  ;  age  and  period  of 
life';  hereditary  predisposition.  Proximate  causes  of  disorder  of  the  ideational 
centres  : — (1)  Original  differences  in  constitution — (a)  imperfectly  developed 
brains  of  the  microcephalic  type,  (b)  cretinism,  (c)  arrest  of  development  by 
disease,  (d)  the  insane  temperament,  or  neurosis  spasmodica ;  (2)  Quantity  and 
quality  of  the  blood — ansemia  and  congestion  ;  alcohol,  opium,  and  other  medi- 
cinal substances,  organic  poison  introduced  from  without  or  bred  in  the  body, 
and  defective  development  of  the  blood  itself  ;  ^3)  Reflex  irritation  or  patholo- 
gical sympathy — illustrations  ;  (4)  Excessive  functional  activity — overwork, 


CONTENTS.  xiii 

emotional  agitation,  depressing  passions,  physical  exhaustion,  &c. ;  (5)  Injnry 
and  disease  of  the  brain — abscess,  tumour,  tubercle,  syphilis.  Concluding 
remarks  on  the  special  causation  of  the  different  forms  of  insanity.  Mental 
derangement  a  matter  of  degree.  Appendix  of  cases,  illustrating  the  causation 
of  insanity Page  195—258 

CHAPTER  II. 

ON  THE   INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE. 

Insanity  of  young  children  must  be  of  a  simple  kind,  the  mental  organization 
being  imperfect.  Convulsions  prove  fatal  at  the  earliest  age  :  more  or  less 
sensorial  insanity  associated  with  them  in  some  cases.  Comparison  of  infantile 
insanity  with  the  insanity  of  animals,  and  with  epileptic  fury.  The  organiza- 
tion of  sensory  residua,  and  hallucinations  of  the  senses  :  hallucinations  not 
uncommon  in  infancy ;  examples.  Choreic  insanity  and  the  phenomena  of 
somnambulism.  Organization  of  idea.  Incoherent  conversation  and  fallacious 
memory  of  children.  Delusions.  Resemblance  between  mania  of  children 
and  the  delirium  of  adults.  Hallucinations  produced  by  morbid  ideas.  The 
difference  between  fancy  and  imagination  corresponds  with  the  difference 
between  delirium  and  mania.  Forms  of  insanity  met  with  in  children 
grouped  : — (1)  Monomania,  when  there  is  a  powerful  impulse  to  some  act  of 
violence  ;  (2)  Choreic  mania — examples  ;  (3)  Cataleptoid  insanity — illustra- 
tions ;  (4)  Epileptic  insanity,  preceding,  taking  the  place  of,  or  following,  the 
usual  convulsions — examples  ;  (5)  Mania ;  (6)  Melancholia ;  (7)  Affective 
insanity— (a)  Instinctive  or  impulsive;  perversions  of  the  instinct  of  self- 
conversation  and  the  instinct  for  propagation,  (b)  Moral  insanity — examples. 
The  insane  child  is  a  degenerate  variety  of  morbid  kind — never  reverts  to  the 
type  of  any  animal :  theroid  degenerations  of  mankind  are  pathological  speci- 
mens. Concluding  remarks  upon  the  seeming  precocity  of  vice  in  some  insane 
children Page  259—293 

CHAPTER  III. 

THE   VARIETIES   OF  INSANITY. 

1.  The  insane  temperament — its  characteristics.    Eccentricity  and  insanity.    The 
relation  of  certain  kinds  of  talent  to  insanity  displayed  ;  also,  the  wide  differ- 
ence between  the  highest  genius  and  any  kind  of  madness.     The  bodily  and 
mental  characters  of  a  strong  hereditary  predisposition.    The  different  varieties 
of  mental   disease  fall  into  two   great  divisions — Affective  and  Ideational. 

2.  Affective  Insanity  ;  (a)  Impulsive — the  nature  of  it  described  and  illustrated 
by  examples ;  enumeration  of  its  causes  and  exposition  of  its  frequent  con- 
nexion with  epilepsy;  (b)  Moral  Insanity — precedes  the  outbreak  of  other 
forms  of  insanity  sometimes,  and  persists  for  a  time  after  disappearance  of 
intellectual  disorder  ;  displayed  chiefly  in  the  degeneration  of  the  social  senti- 
ments :  examples ;  vicious  acts  not  proof  of  moral  insanity ;  its  connexion 
with  other  forms  of  mental  derangement  and  with  epilepsy.     3.  Ideational 
Insanity ;    (a)  Partial,   including    monomania   and    chronic   melancholia ; 
(b)  General,  including  mania  and  melancholia,  chronic  and  acute.      Modified 
classification  of  mental  diseases.     The  nature,  varieties,  symptoms,  and  course 
of  partial  ideational  insanity  discussed  and  illustrated  by  examples.     The 
nature,    varieties,    symptoms,    and   course    of  general   ideational   insanity. 

4.  Dementia,  acute  and  chronic.  Causes  of  acute  dementia,  and  examples. 
Chronic  dementia ;  three  groups  of  cases  according  to  the  degree  of  mental 
degeneration.  5.  General  paralysis — its  causes,  symptoms,  and  course. 

Page  294—367 

CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY. 

Absence  of  morbid  appearances  after  death  no  proof  of  the  absence  of  morbid 
changes :  illustrations  of  abolition  of  nervous  function  without  recognisable 
changes  of  structure.  1.  Summary  of  latest  physiological  researches  into 


xiv  CONTENTS. 

nervous  function :  time-rate  of  conduction  ;  electro-motor  properties  of  nerve, 
and  the  changes  produced  by  the  electrotonic  state  ;  Katelectrotonus  and  Ane- 
lectrotonus ;  chemical  changes  produced  by  functional  activity.  2.  Indivi- 
duality of  nerve  element  considered  :  functional  relation  between  the  individual 
element  and  its  supply  of  blood ;  state  of  the  cerebral  circulation  during 
bleep  ;  results  of  the  extreme  exhaustion  of  nerve  element,  and  of  the  effects 
of  poisons  upon  it ;  its  modification  by  the  habit  of  exercise  through  the 
residua  of  previous  activity.  3.  Reflex  pathological  action  or  pathological 
sympathy — illustrations.  Morbid  anatomy  of  insanity  :  (1)  M'orbid  products, 
such  as  Tumour,  Abscess,  Cysticercus,  &c. ;  interim ttence  of  mental  symptoms, 
and  extreme  incoherence  of  them  when  they  occur  in  such  cases.  (2)  Morbid 
appearances  in  the  Brain  and  Membranes — in  acute  insanity;  in  chronic  in- 
sanity ;  in  general  paralysis ;  in  syphilitic  dementia.  Weight  and  specific 
gravity  of  the  brain  in  insanity.  Microscopical  researches,  and  interpretation 
of  the  results  of  them.  Summary  of  the  kinds  of  degeneration  met  with  in 
the  brain  after  insanity  :  (a)  Inflammatory  degeneration  :  (b)  Connective  tissue 
degeneration;  (c)  Fatty  degeneration  ;  (d)  Amyloid  and  colloid  degeneration  ; 
(e)  Pigmentary  degeneration;  (f)  Calcareous  degeneration.  (3)  Morbid  con- 
ditions of  other  organs  of  tJie  body — of  the  lungs,  the  heart,  the  abdominal 
organs,  and  the  sexual  organs.  Concluding  observations  .  .  Page  368 — 408 

CHAPTER  V. 

THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF   INSANITY. 

The  difficulty  of  the  diagnosis  in  some  cases.  Acute  mania  :  the  difference  be- 
tween acute  mania  caused  by  intemperance,  and  delirium  tremens.  Chronic 
mania  and  feigned  insanity.  The  mode  of  detecting  partial  ideational  in- 
sanity, monomaniacal  or  melancholic.  Eccentricity  and  insanity — the  impor- 
tant differences  between  them.  The  diagnosis  of  moral  insanity.  The 
detection  of  general  paralysis  in  its  earliest  stages.  Dr.  Bncknill,  on  the 
mode  of  conducting  the  examination  of  an  insane  patient  .  .  Page  409 — 416 

CHAPTER  VI. 

THE   PROGNOSIS   OF   INSANITY. 

Insanity  reduces  the  mean  duration  of  life.  The  indications  of  a  fatal  termination. 
The  probability  of  recovery  depends  on  the  form,  the  duration,  and  the  cause 
of  the  disease.  Melancholia  the  most  curable,  acute  mania  coming  next.  The 
indications  of  recovery.  The  prognosis  very  bad  in  chronic  mania,  mono- 
mania, and  moral  insanity,  but  good  in  acute  dementia.  The  causes  of  the 
disease  influencing  the  prognosis.  The  age  most  favourable  to  recovery.  The 
proportion  of  recoveries,  relapses,  and  deaths.  Evil  effects  of  injudicious 
interference Page  417— 421 

CHAPTER  VII. 

THE   TREATMENT    OF   INSANITY. 

The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  treatment ;  the  working  of  the  Lunacy  Acts ;  the 
public  horror  of  insanity,  and  the  social  prejudices  regarding  it.  The  practice 
of  indiscriminate  sequestration  unjustifiable.  The  true  principle  to  have  in 
view :  argument  in  favour  of  it.  The  treatment  of  the  insane  in  private 
dwellings.  Condition  of  the  Chancery  patients.  The  evils  of  monstrous 
asylums.  Necessity  of  early  treatment.  Moral  treatment  of  insanity  ;  change 
of  residence,  occupation,  amusements,  &«.  Medical  treatment  :  warm  and 
cold  baths ;  blood-letting  ;  counter-irritants ;  diet ;  stimulants :  the  use  of 
opium  ;  digitalis  ;  hyoscyamus,  hydrocyanic  acid  and  bromide  of  potassium  ; 
tonics.  Concluding  remarks  upon  the  treatment  of  chronic  insanity. 

Page  422— 442 


PART  I. 
THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  MIND. 

CHAPTER  I.  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  THE  STUDY  OF  HIND. 
,,       II.  THE  MIND  AND  THE  NERVOUS  SYSTEM. 

,,  III.  THE  SPINAL  COED,  OR  TERTIARY  NERVOUS  CENTRES  ;  OR  NERVOUS 
CENTRES  OF  REFLEX  ACTION. 

„  IV.  SECONDARY  NERVOUS  CENTRES,  OR  SENSORY  GANGLIA  ;  SENSORIUM 
COMMUNE. 

„  V.  HEMISPHERICAL  GANGLIA  ;  CORTICAL  CELLS  OF  THE  CEREBRAL 
HEMISPHERES  ;  IDEATIONAL  NERVOUS  CENTRES  ;  PRIMARY 
NERVOUS  CENTRES  ;  INTELLECTORIUM  COMMUNE. 

,,      VI.  THE  EMOTIONS. 
,,     VII.  VOLITION. 

,,  VIII.  MOTOR  NERVOUS  CENTRES  OR  MOTORIUM  COMMUNE,  AND  ACTU- 
ATION OR  EFFECTION. 

IX.  MEMORY  AND  IMAGINATION. 


THE 

PHYSIOLOGY    AND    PATHOLOGY 
OF    THE    MIND. 

CHAPTER  I. 
ON  THE  METHOD  OF  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND. 


"  Ich  sag'  es  dir :  em  Kerl,  der  speculirt, 
1st  wie  ein  Thier,  auf  diirrer  Heide 
Von  einem  bosen  Geist  im  Kreis  herum  gefuhrt, 
,Und  rings  umher  liegt  schone  griine  "Weide." 

Faust. 

rjlHE  right  estimate  of  his  relations  to  external  nature  has 
-*-  ever  been  to  man  a  matter  of  extreme  difficulty  and  uncer- 
tainty. In  the  savage  state  of  his  infancy  he  feels  himself  so  little 
in  the  presence  of  nature's  vastness,  so  helpless  in  conflict  with 
its  resistless  forces,  that  he  falls  down  in  abject  prostration  before 
its  various  powers.  The  earth  of  a  sudden  heaves  beneath  his 
trembling  feet,  and  his  shattered  dwellings  bury  him  in  their 
rains  ;  the  swelling  waters  overpass  their  accustomed  boundaries 
and  indifferently  sweep  away  his  property  or  his  life ;  the  furious 
hurricane  ruthlessly  destroys  the  labour  of  years  ;  and  famine  or 
pestilence,  regardless  of  his  streaming  eyes  and  piteous  prayers, 
stalks  in  desolating  march  through  a  horror-stricken  people.  In 
the  deep  consciousness  of  his  individual  powerlessness  he  falls 
down  in  an  agony  of  terror  and  worships  the  causes  of  his 
sufferings  :  he  deifies  the  powers  of  nature,  builds  altars  to  pro- 
pitiate the  angry  Neptune,  and,  by  offering  sacrifices  of  that 
which  is  most  dear  to  him,  even  his  own  flesh  and  blood,  hopes 
to  mitigate  the  fury  of  Phrebus  Apollo  and  to  stay  the  dreadful 
clang  of  his  silver  bow.  Everything  appears  supernatural  because 

he  knows  nothing  of  the  natural ;  palsied  with  fear,  he  cannot 
2 


2  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP. 

observe  and  investigate  ;  himself  be  feels  to  be  insignificant  and 
belpless,  while  to  nature  he  looks  up  with  reverential  awe  as 
mighty  and  all-powerful.  Eeflect  on  the  fearful  feelings  which 
any  apparent  exception  to  the  regular  course  of  nature  even  now 
produces,  on  the  superstitious  dread  which  of  a  certainty  follows 
such  unfamiliar  event,  and  it  will  not  be  difficult  to  realize  the 
extreme  mental  prostration  of  primitive  mankind. 

Through  familiarity,  however,  consternation  after  a  while  sub- 
sides, and  the  spirit  of  inquiry  follows  upon  that  of  reverence  ; 
the  prostrate  being  rises  from  his  knees  to  examine  into  the 
causes  of  events.  Experience,  sooner  or  later,  reveals  the  unifor- 
mity with  which  they  come  to  pass ;  he  learns  more  or  less  of 
the  laws  of  their  occurrence,  and  perceives  that  he  can  by  obser- 
vation avoid  much  of  the  damage  which  he  has  hitherto  suffered 
— that  he  can,  by  attending  to  their  laws,  even  use  to  his  profit 
those  once  .dreaded  physical  forces.  ISTow  it  is  that  man  begins 
to  feel  that  he  has  a  much  higher  position  in  nature  than  in  his 
infancy  he  had  imagined ;  for  a  time  he  looks  upon  himself  as 
belonging  to  the  same  order  as  the  things  around  him ;  and  he 
emancipates  himself  in  great  part  from  the  dominion  of  the 
priests  in  whom  he  had  hitherto  believed  as  the  sacred  pro- 
pitiators of  the  gods  whom  his  fears  had  fashioned.  When  his 
creeds  are  seen  to  spring  from  an  imperfection  of  the  intellect, 
the  prayers  founded  on  them  are  abandoned  as  marking  an 
imperfection  of  the  will. 

Thales  of  Miletus  is  said  to  have  been  the  first  who,  in  this 
advance  amongst  the  Greeks,  laid  aside  the  priestly  character 
and  stood  forth  as  a  pure  philosopher ;  and  those  who  imme- 
diately followed  him,  and  constituted  the  Ionian  school  of  philo- 
sophy, having  an  instinctive  feeling  of  the  unity  between  man 
and  nature,  did  seek  objectively  for  a  first  principle  of  things — 
the  apx?) — common  to  him  and  the  rest  of  nature.  This  slow  and 
tedious  method  wTas  soon,  however,  abandoned  for  the  easier  and 
quicker  method  of  deduction  from  consciousness  :  abstractions 
were  made  from  the  concrete  by  the  active  mind;  and  the  abstrac- 
tions, being  then  converted  into  objective  realities,  were  looked 
upon  and  applied  as  actual  entities  in  nature.  Anaximander, 
looking  into  his  own  mind  and  finding  an  imbecility  there,  gave 
to  it  the  name  of  the  Infinite,  and,  transferring  it  outwards,  was 


L]  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  3 

thenceforth  quite  content  to  pronounce  it  to  be  the  true  origin  of 
all  things ;  whilst  Pythagoras,  going  perhaps  still  further  into 
the  unmeaning,  proclaimed  numbers,  which  are  mere  arbitrary 
symbols,  to  be  actual  existences  and  the  essences  of  things. 
Thus  it  was  that  man,  forgetful  of  his  early  humility,  rose  by 
degrees  to  the  creation  of  the  laws  of  an  external  world  after  the 
pattern  of  his  own  thoughts  :  such  motives  as  he  felt  to  influence 
his  own  actions  were  held  also  to  be  the  principles  governing 
the  relations  of  external  objects  ;  and  natural  phenomena  were 
explained  by  sympathies,  loves,  discord,  hates.  As  the  child 
attributes  life  to  the  dead  objects  around  it,  speaking  with  them, 
and  thinking  to  receive  answers  from  them,  so  mankind,  in  the 
childhood  of  thought,  assigns  its  subjective  feelings  to  objective 
nature,  entirely  subordinating  the  physical  to  the  metaphysical : 
it  is  but  another  form  of  that  anthropomorphism  by  which  the 
Dryad  was  placed  in  the  tree,  the  Naiad  in  the  fountain,  Atropos 
with  her  scissors  near  the  running  life-thread,  and  a  Sun-god 
enthroned  in  the  place  of  a  law  of  gravitation.  As  was  natural, 
man,  who  thus  imposed  his  laws  upon  nature,  soon  lost  all  his 
former  humility,  and  from  one  erroneous  extreme  passed  to  the 
opposite  :  as  once  he  fell  abjectly  down  in  an  agony  of  fear,  so 
now  he  rose  proudly  up  in  an  ecstasy  of  conceit. 

The  assertion  that  man  is  the  measure  of  the  universe  defi- 
nitely expressed  this  metaphysical  stage  of  human  development. 
But  it  was  a  state  that  must  plainly  be  fruitless  of  real  know- 
ledge ;  there  could  be  no  general  agreement  among  men  when 
each  one  looked  into  his  own  mind,  and,  arbitrarily  making  what 
he  thought  he  found  there  the  laws  and  principles  of  external 
nature,  constructed  the  laws  of  the  world  out  of  the  depths  of 
his  own  consciousness.  Disputes  must  continually  arise  about 
words  when  words  have  not  definite  meanings ;  and  the  unavoid- 
able issue  must  be  Sophistry  and  Pyrrhonism  :  the  history  of  the 
human  mind  does,  indeed,  show  that  systems  of  scepticism  have 
regularly  alternated  with  systems  of  philosophy.  Fruitful  of 
empty  ideas  and  wild  'fancies,  philosophy  has  not  been  unlike 
those  barren  women  who  would  fain  have  the  rumbling  of  wind 
to  be  the  motion  of  offspring.  Convinced  of  the  vanity  of  its 
ambitious  attempts,  Socrates  endeavoured  to  bring  philosophy 
down  from  the  clouds,  introduced  it  into  the  cities,  and  applied 


4  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP. 

it  to  the  conduct  of  human  life ;  while  Plato  and  Aristotle,  oppo- 
site as  were  their  professed  methods,  were  both  alive  to  the 
vagueness  of  the  common  disputations,  and  both  laboured  hard 
to  fix  definitely  the  meanings  of  words.  But  words  cannot  attain 
to  definiteness  save  as  living  outgrowths  of  realities,  as  the  exact 
expressions  of  the  phenomena  of  life  in  the  increasing  speciality 
of  human  adaptation  to  external  nature.  As  it  is  with  life 
objectively,  and  as  it  is  with  cognition  or  subjective  life,  so  is  it 
with  the  language  in  which  the  phenomena  are  embodied  :  in 
the  organic  growth  of  a  language  there  is  a  continuous  differen- 
tiation, first  of  nouns  into  substantives  and  adjectives,  then  of 
the  latter  into  adjectives  proper  and  nouns  abstract ;  synonymes 
again  disappear,  each  getting  its  special  appropriation,  and  super- 
fluous words  are  taken  up  by  new  developments  and  combi- 
nations of  thought.  How,  then,  was  it  possible  that  a  one-sided 
method,  which  entirely  ignored  the  examination  of  nature,  should 
do  more  than  repeat  the  same  things  over  and  over  again  in 
words  which,  though  they  might  be  different,  were  yet  not  less 
indefinite  ?  The  results  have  answered  to  the  absurdity  of  the 
method ;  for,  after  being  in  fashion  for  more  than  two  thousand 
years,  nothing  has  been  established  by  it ;  "  not  only  what  was 
asserted  once  is  asserted  still,  but  what  was  a  question  once  is 
a  question  still,  and  instead  of  being  resolved  by  discussion  is 
only  fixed  and  fed."  (]) 

Perhaps,  if  men  had  always  lived  in  the  sunny  climes  of  the 
south,  where  the  luxuriance  of  nature  allowed  of  human  indo- 
lence, they  might  have  continued  vainly  to  speculate ;  but  when 
they  were  brought  face  to  face  with  nature  in  the  rugged  north, 
and  were  driven  to  force  by  persevering  labour  the  means  of 
subsistence  from  her  sterile  bosom,  then  there  arose  the  necessity 
to  observe  her  processes  and  investigate  her  secret  ways.  There 
was  an  unavoidable  intending  of  the  mind  to  the  realities  of 
nature ;  and  this  practice,  which  the  exigencies  of  living  first 
enforced,  became  in  the  fulness  of  time  with  those  who  had 
leisure  and  opportunity  the  disposition  consciously  to  interrogate 
and  interpret  nature.  In  Eoger  Bacon,  we  see  the  human  mind 
striving,  as  it  were,  unconsciously  after  the  true  method  of 
development ;  while  in  the  Chancellor  Bacon,  who  systematized 
the  principles  and  laid  down  the  rules  ef  the  inductive  philo- 


I.]  THE  STUDY  OF  MIffD.  5 

gophy,  we  observe  it  doing  with  design  and  method  that  which 
it  had  hitherto  been  blindly  aiming  at.  But  as  it  is  with  the 
infant,  so  was  it  with  humanity  ;  action  preceded  consciousness, 
and  Bacon  himself  was  the  efflux  of  a  spirit  which  prevailed  and 
not  the  creator  of  it.  By  thus  humbling  himself  to  obey,  man 
has  conquered  nature  ;  and  those  plenteous  "fruits  and  invented 
works "  which  Bacon  confidently  anticipated  as  "  sponsors  and 
sureties  "  for  the  truth  of  his  method,  have  been  reaped  in  the 
richest  abundance. 

It  seems  strange  enough  now  to  us  that  men  should  not  have 
sooner  hit  upon  the  excellent  and  profitable  method  of  induction. 
How  came  it  to  pass  that  when  they  surveyed  organic  nature,  as 
Aristotle  notably  did,  they  failed  to  perceive  the  progress  in 
development  from  the  general  and  simple  to  the  special  and 
complex,  which  is  evident  throughout  it  ?  Had  they  but  formu- 
larised  this  law  of  increasing  speciality  and  complexity  in  organic 
adaptation  to  external  nature,  then  they  had  scarcely  failed  to 
apply  it  to  conscious  human  development ;  and  that  would  have 
been  to  establish  deductively  the  necessity  of  the  inductive 
method.  Unfortunately,  Aristotle  stood  alone ;  and  it  remains 
his  particular  merit  to  have  foreseen  in  some  sort  the  value  of 
the  inductive  method.  Had  he,  also,  consistently  followed  it  in 
practice,  which  he  did  not,  there  was  an  impassable  hindrance 
to  its  general  adoption,  in  the  moral  errors  engendered  by  the 
metaphysical  or  subjective  method,  of  which  Plato  was  so 
powerful  a  representative  and  so  influential  an  exponent.  Man, 
as  the  measure  of  the  universe,  esteemed  himself  far  too  highly 
to  descend  to  be  the  servant  and  interpreter  of  nature  ;  and  this 
erroneous  conceit  not  only  affected  his  conception  of  his  rela- 
tion to  the  rest  of  nature,  but  permeated  his  social  nature,  and 
vitiated  his  whole  habit  of  thought :  the  superstitious  reverence 
of  the  Greek  who  would  put  to  death  a  victorious  general  because 
he  had  left  his  dead  uuburied  on  the  field  of  battle,  must  have 
prevented  Aristotle  from  anatomical  examination  of  the  structure 
of  the  human  body.  The  same  errors  are  continually  reappearing 
in  human  history  :  what  happened  in  the  middle  ages  may  illus- 
trate for  us  the  habit  of  Greek  thought;  for  at  that  time  mistaken 
religious  prejudice  allied  itself  most  closely  with  the  metaphy- 
sical method  which  exalted  man  so  much  over  the  rest  of  nature. 


6  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP. 

opposing  most  virulently  the  birth  of  positive  science,  which 
seemed  to  threaten  to  degrade  him ;  and  for  a  time  it  was  almost 
doubtful  which  would  win.  Can  we  wonder,  then,  that  the 
erroneous  method  was  triumphant  in  Greece  in  the  fourth  cen- 
tury before  Christ,  when  it  is  only  recently  in  England,  in  the 
nineteenth  century  after  Christ,  that  the  barbarian's  reverence 
for  a  dead  body  has  permitted  anatomical  dissection,  and  when 
the  finger-bone  of  a  saint,  or  a  lag  of  his  clothing,  is  still  trea- 
sured up,  in  some  parts  of  the  world,  as  a  most  precious  relic 
endued  with  miraculous  virtues  !  The  evil  of  the  metaphysical 
method  was  not  intellectual  deficiency  only,  but  a  corresponding 
baneful  moral  error. 

The  adoption  of  the  inductive  method,  which  makes  man  the 
servant  and  interpreter  of  nature,  is  in  reality  the  systematic 
pursuance  of  the  law  of  progress  in  organic  development ;  it  is 
the  conscious  intending  of  the  mind  to  external  realities,  the 
submitting  of  the  understanding  to  things,  in  other  words,  the 
increasing  speciality  of  internal  adjustment  to  external  impres- 
sions ;  and  the  result  is  a  victory  by  obedience,  an  individual 
increase  through  adaptation  to  outward  relations,  in  accordance 
with  the  so-called  principle  of  natural  selection.  The  mental 
capacity  of  one  who  is  deprived  of  any  one  of  his  senses,  which 
are  the  inlets  to  impressions  from  without,  or  the  gateways  of 
knowledge,  is  less  than  that  of  one  •  who  is  in  the  full  pos- 
session of  all  his  senses ;  and  the  great  advances  in  science 
have  uniformly  corresponded  with  the  invention  of  some  instru- 
ment by  which  the  power  of  the  senses  has  been  increased,  or 
their  range  of  action  extended.  Astronomy  is  that  which  the 
eye  has  been  enabled  to  see  by  the  telescope  ;  the  revelations  of 
the  inmost  processes  of  nature  have  been  due  to  the  increased 
power  of  vision  which  the  microscope  has  conferred ;  the  ex- 
tremely delicate  balance  has  supplied  to  science  a  numerical 
exactness  ;  the  spectrum  has  furnished  a  means  of  analysing  the 
constitution  of  the  heavenly  bodies;  and  the  galvanometer 
already  gives  the  most  hopeful  presage  of  important  discoveries 
in  nervous  function.  Through  the  senses  has  knowledge  entered; 
and  the  intellect  has  in  turn  devised  means  for  extending  the 
action  and  increasing  the  discriminating  exactness  of  the  senses  : 
there  have  been  action  and  reaction  and  progressive  specialization 


i.]  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  7 

and  complication  thereof.  The  two  aspects  of  this  relation  we 
designate,  in  their  highest  manifestations,  as  cognition  and  action, 
or  science  and  art. 

Tims  much  concerning  the  historical  evolution  of  the  induc- 
tive method.  But  now  comes  the  most  important  question, 
whether  it  is  available  for  the  study  of  the  whole  of  nature. 
Can  we  apply  the  true  inductive  and  objective  method  to  the 
investigation  of  psychical  as  well  as  of  physical  nature  ?  In  the 
latter  case,  it  has  long  received  universal  sanction;  but  in  the 
study  of  a  man's  mind  it  is  still  a  question  what  method  should 
rightly  be  employed.  Plainly,  it  is  not  possible  by  simple 
observation  of  others  to  form  true  inductions  as  to  their  mental 
phenomena  ;  the  defect  of  an  observation  which  reaches  only  to 
the  visible  results  of  invisible  operations,  exposes  us  without 
protection  to  the  hypocrisy,  conscious  or  unconscious,  of  the 
individual ;  and  the  positive  tendency,  which  no  one  can  avoid, 
to  interpret  the  action  of  another  mind  according  to  the  measure 
of  one's  own,  to  see  not  what  is  in  the  object,  but  what  is  in  the 
subject,  frequently  vitiates  an  assumed  penetration  into  motives. 
If  we  call  to  our  aid  the  principles  of  the  received  system  of 
psychology,  matters  are  not  mended ;  for  its  ill-defined  terms 
and  vague  traditions,  injuriously  affecting  our  perceptions,  and 
over-ruling  our  understanding,  do  not  fail  to  confuse  and  falsify 
inferences.  It  must  unfortunately  be  added  that,  in  the  present 
state  of  physiological  science,  it  is  quite  impossible  to  ascertain, 
by  observation  and  experiment,  the  nature  of  those  organic 
processes  which  are  the  bodily  conditions  of  mental  phenomena. 
There  would  appear,  then,  to  be  no  help  for  it  but  to  have  entire 
recourse  to  the  psychological  method — that  method  of  interro- 
gating self-consciousness  which  has  found  so  much  favour  at  all 
times.  Before  making  any  such  admission,  let  this  reflection  be 
weighed :  that  the  instinctive  nisus  of  mankind  commonly 
precedes  the  recognition  of  systematic  method ;  that  men, 
without  knowing  why,  do  follow  a  course  which  there  exist  very 
good  reasons  for.  Xay  more  :  the  practical  instincts  of  mankind 
often  work  beneficially  in  an  actual  contradiction  to  their  pro- 
fessed doctrines.  When  in  the  middle  ages  faith  was  put  in  the 
philosophy  of  the  schools,  the  interrogation  of  nature  by  experi- 
ment was  going  on  in  many  places  ;  and  the  superstitious  people 


8  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP. 

that  believes  in  the  direct  interference  of  spirits  or  of  gods,  still 
adopts  such  means  of  self-protection  as  a  simple  experience  of 
nature  teaches.  Man  does  not  consciously  determine  his  method 
and  then  enter  upon  it ;  he  enters  blindly  upon  it,  and  at  a 
certain  stage  awakes  to  consciousness.  In  the  onward  flowing 
stream  of  nature's  organic  development,  life  first  becomes  self- 
conscious  in  man :  in  the  slumbering  mental  development  of 
mankind,  it  is  the  genius  who  at  due  time  awakens  to  active  con- 
sciousness the  sleeping  century.  It  would  indeed  go  hard  with 
mankind  if  they  must  act  wittingly  before  they  acted  at  all. 

Two  facts  come  out  very  distinctly  from  a  candid  observation 
of  the  state  of  thought  at  the  present  day.  One  of  these  is  the 
little  favour  in  which  metaphysics  is  held,  and  the  very  general 
conviction  that  there  is  no  profit  in  it :  the  consequence  of  which 
firmly  fixed  belief  is,  that  it  is  cultivated  as  a  science  only  by 
those  whose  particular  business  it  is  to  do  so,  who  are  engaged 
not  in  action,  wherein  the  true  balance  of  life  is  maintained,  but 
in  dreaming  in  professorial  chairs  ;  or  if  by  any  others,  by  the 
ambitious  youth  who  goes  through  an  attack  of  metaphysics  as 
a  child  goes  through  an  attack  of  measles,  getting  haply  an 
immunity  from  a  similar  affection  for  the  rest  of  his  life ;  or 
lastly,  by  the  untrained  and  immature  intellects  of  those  meta- 
physical dabblers  who  continue  youths  for  life.  A  second  fact, 
which  has  scarcely  yet  been  sufficiently  weighed,  is  the  extreme 
favour  in  which  biography  is  held  at  the  present  time,  and  the 
large  development  which  it  is  receiving. 

Let  us  look  first  at  the  import  of  biography.  As  the  business 
of  .a  man  in  the  world  is  action  of  some  kind,  and  as  his  action 
undoubtedly  results  from  the  relations  between  him  and  his 
surroundings,  it  is  plain  that  biography,  which  estimates  both 
the  individual  and  his  circumstances,  and  displays  their  re- 
actions, can  alone  give  an  adequate  account  of  the  man.  What 
was  the  mortal's  force  of  character,  what  was  the  force  of  circum- 
stances, how  he  struggled  with  them,  and  how  lie  was  affected  by 
them, — what  was  the  life-product  under  the  particular  conditions 
of  its  evolution  : — these  are  the  questions  which  a  good  biography 
aspires  to  answer.  It  regards  man  as  a  concrete  being,  acknow- 
ledges the  differences  between  men  in  characters  and  capabilities, 
recognises  the  helpful  or  baneful  influence  of  surroundings,  and 


i.J  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  9 

patiently  unfolds  the  texture  of  life  as  the  inevitable  result  of 
the  elements  out  of  which,  and  the  conditions  under  which,  it 
has  been  worked.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  application  of  positive 
science  to  human  life,  and  the  necessary  consequence  of  the  pro- 
gress of  the  inductive  philosophy.  No  marvel,  then,  that  bio- 
graphy forms  so  large  a  part  of  the  literature  of  the  day,  and 
that  novels,  its  more  or  less  faithful  mirrors,  are  in  so  great 
request.  The  instincts  of  mankind  are  here,  as  heretofore,  in 
advance  of  systematic  knowledge  or  method. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  metaphysician  deals  with  man  as  an 
abstract  or  ideal  being,  postulates  him  as  a  certain  constant 
quantity,  and  thereupon  confidently  enunciates  empty  propo- 
sitions. The  consequence  is,  that  metaphysics  has  never  made 
any  advance,  but  has  only  appeared  in  new  garb  ;  nor  can  it  in 
truth  advance,  unless  some  great  addition  is  made  to  the  inborn 
power  of  the  human  mind.  It  surely  argues  no  little  conceit  in 
any  one  to  believe  that  what  Plato  and  Descartes  have  not  done, 
he,  following  the  same  method,  will  do.*  Plato  interrogated  his 
own  mind,  and  set  forth  its  answers  with  a  clearness,  subtlety, 
and  elegance  of  style  that  is  unsurpassed  and  unsurpassable  ; 
until  then  the  very  unlikely  event  of  a  better  mind  than  his 
making  its  appearance,  his  system  may  well,  remain  as  the  ade- 
quate representative  of  what  the  metaphysical  method  can 
accomplish.  Superseded  by  a  more  fruitful  method,  it  is  prac- 
tically obsolete  ;  and  its  rare  advocate,  when  such  an  one  is 
found,  may  be  said,  like  the  Aturian  parrot  of  which  Humboldt 
tells,  to  speak  in  the  language  of  an  extinct  tribe  to  a  people 
which  understand  him  not.f 

But  the  method  of  interrogating  self-consciousness  may  be 
employed,  and  is  largely  employed,  without  carrying  it  to  a 
metaphysical  extreme.  Empirical  psychology,  founded  on  direct 
consciousness  as  distinguished  from  the  transcendental  conscious- 
ness on  which  metaphysics  is  based,  claims  to  give  a  faithful 

*  "  It  would  be  an  unsound  fancy  and  self-contradictory,  to  expect  that  tilings 
which  have  never  yet  been  done  can  be  done,  except  by  means  which  have  never 
yet  been  tried." — Nov.  Org.  Aphorism  vi. 

t  "  There  still  lives,  and  it  is  a  singular  fact,  an  old  parrot  in  Maypures  which 
cannot  be  understood,  because,  as  the  natives  assert,  it  speaks  the  language  of  the 
.  Atures  " — an  extinct  tribe  of  Indians,   whose  last  refuge  was  the  rocks  of  the 
foaming  cataract  of  the  Orinoco. — Humboldt  :   Views  of  Nature,  I.  p.  172. 


10  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP 

record  of  our  different  states  of  mind  and  their  mutual  relations, 
and  has  been  extravagantly  lauded,  by  the  Scotch  school,  as  an 
inductive  science.  Its  value  as  a  science  must  plainly  rest  upon 
the  sufficiency  and  reliability  of  consciousness  as  a  witness  of 
that  which  takes  place  in  the  mind."  Is  the  foundation  then 
sufficiently  secure  ?  It  may  well  be  doubted ;  and  for  the 
following  reasons  : 

(a.)  There  are  but  few  individuals  who  are  capable  of  attending 
to  the  succession  of  phenomena  in  their  own  minds  ;  such  intro- 
spection demanding  a  particular  cultivation,  and  being  practised 
with  success  by  those  only  who  have  learned  the  terms,  and  been 
imbued  with  the  theories,  of  the  system  of  psychology  supposed 
to  be  thereby  established. 

(Z>.)  There  is  no  agreement  between  those  who  have  acquired 
the  power  of  introspection  :  and  men  of  apparently  equal  culti- 
vation and  capacity  will,  with  the  utmost  sincerity  and  confi- 
dence, lay  down  directly  contradictory  propositions.  It  is  not 
possible  to  convince  either  opponent  of  error,  as  it  might  be  in  a 
matter  of  objective  science,  because  he  appeals  to  a  witness 
whose  evidence  can  be  taken  by  no  one  but  himself,  and  whose 
veracity,  therefore,  cannot  be  tested. 

(c.)  To  direct  consciousness  inwardly  to  the  observation  of  a 
particular  state  of  mind  is  to  isolate  that  activity  for  the  time,  to 
cut  it  off  from  its  relations,  and,  therefore,  to  render  it  unnatural. 
In  order  to  observe  its  own  action,  it  is  necessary  that  the  mind 
pause  from  activity  ;  and  yet  it  is  the  train  of  activity  that  is  to 
be  observed.  As  long  as  you  cannot  effect  the  pause  necessary 
for  self-contemplation,  there  can  be  no  observation  of  the  current 
of  activity :  if  the  pause  is  effected,  then  there  can  be  nothing 
to  observe.  This  cannot  be  accounted  a  vain  and  theoretical 
objection ;  for  the  results  of  introspection  too  surely  confirm  its 
validity  :  what  was  a  question  once  is  a  question  still,  and 
instead  of  being  resolved  by  introspective  analysis  is  only  fixed 
and  fed.  (2) 

(d.)  The  madman's  delusion  is  of  itself  sufficient  to  excite 
profound  distrust,  not  only  in  the  objective  truth,  but  in  the 
subjective  worth,  of  the  testimony  of  an  individual's  self-con- 
sciousness. Descartes  laid  it  down  as  the  fundamental  propo- 
sition of  philosophy  that  whatever  the  mind  could  clearly  and 


i.]  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  ]  \ 

distinctly  conceive,  was  true  :  if  there  is  one  thing  more  clearly 
and  distinctly  conceived  than  another,  it  is  commonly  the  mad- 
man's delusion.  No  marvel,  then,  that  psychologists,  since  the 
time  of  Descartes,  have  held  that  the  veracity  of  consciousness 
is  to  be  relied  upon  only  under  certain  rules,  from  the  violation 
of  which,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  believed,  the  contradictions  of  phi- 
losophy have  arisen.  On  what  evidence  then  do  the  rules  rest  ? 
Either  on  the  evidence  of  consciousness,  whence  it  happens  that 
each  philosopher  and  each  lunatic  has  his  own  rules,  and  no 
advance  is  made ;  or  upon  the  observation  and  judgment  of 
mankind,  to  confess  which  is  very  much  like  throwing  self-con- 
sciousness overboard — not  otherwise  than  as  was  advantageously 
done  by  positive  science  when  the  figures  on  the  thermometer, 
and  not  the  subjective  feelings  of  heat  or  cold,  were  recognised 
to  be  the  true  test  of  the  individual's  temperature. 

It  is  not  merely  a  charge  against  self-consciousness  that  it  is 
not  reliable  in  that  of  which  it  does  give  information  ;  but  it  is 
a  proveable  charge  against  it  that  it  does  not  give  any  account 
of  a  large  and  important  part  of  our  mental  activity  :  its  light 
reaches  only  to  states  of  consciousness,  and  not  to  states  of  mind. 
Its  evidence  then  is  not  only  untrustworthy  save  under  con- 
ditions which  it  nowise  helps  us  to  fix,  but  it  is  of  little  value, 
because  it  has  reference  only  to  a  small  part  of  that  for  which 
its  testimony  is  invoked.  May  we  not  then  justly  say  that  self- 
consciousness  is  utterly  incompetent  to  supply  the  facts  for  the 
building  up  of  a  truly  inductive  psychology  ?  Let  the  following 
reasons  further  warrant  the  assertion : 

1.  It  is  the  fundamental  maxim  of  the  inductive  philosophy 
that  observation  should  begin  with  simple  instances,  ascent 
being  made  from  them  through  appropriate  generalizations,  and 
that  no  particulars  should  be  neglected.  How  does  the  interro- 
gation of  self-consciousness  fulfil  this  most  just  demand  ?  It  is 
a  method  which  is  applicable  only  to  mind  at  a  high  degree  of 
development,  so  that  it  perforce  begins  with  those  most  complex 
instances  which  give  the  least  certain  information ;  while  it 
passes  completely  by  mind  in  its  lower  stages  of  development, 
so  that  it  ignores  those  simpler  instances  which  give  the  best  or 
securest  information.  In  this  it  resembles  the  philosopher  who, 
while  he  gazed  upon  the  stars,  fell  into  the  water ;  for  if,  as 


12  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP. 

Bacon  says,  "  he  had  looked  down  he  might  have  seen  the  stars 
in  the  water,  but  looking  aloft  he  could  not  see  the  water  in  the 
stars."(3)  "Where  has  the  animal  any  place  in  the  accepted  system 
of  psychology  ?  or  the  child  the  direction  of  whose  early  mental 
development  is  commonly  decisive  of  its  future  destiny?  To 
speak  of  induction  where  so  many  important  instances  are  neg- 
lected, and  others  are  selected  according  to  caprice  or  the  ease  of 
convenience,  is  to  rob  the  word  of  all  definite  meaning,  and 
most  mischievously  to  misuse  it.  A  psychology  which  is  truly 
inductive  must  follow  the  order  of  nature,  and  begin  where  'mind 
begins  in  the  animal  and  infant,  gradually  rising  thence  to  those 
higher  and  more  complex  mental  phenomena  which  the  intro- 
spective philosopher  discerns  or  thinks  he  discerns.  Certainly 
it  may  be  said,  and  it  has  been  said,  that  inferences  as  to  the 
mental  phenomena  of  the  child  can  be  correctly  formed  from  the 
phenomena  of  the  adult  mind.  But  it  is  exactly  because  such 
erroneous  inferences  have  been  made,  that  the  mental  phenomena 
of  the  child  have  been  misunderstood  and  misinterpreted,  and 
that  psychology  has  not  received  the  benefit  of  the  correction 
which  a  faithful  observation  of  them  would  have  furnished.  It 
was  the  physiologist  who  by  a  careful  observation  of  the  lower 
animals,  "  having  entered  firmly  on  the  true  road,  and  submitting 
his  understanding  to  things,"  arrived  at  generalizations  which 
were  found  to  explain  many  of  the  mental  phenomena  of  the 
child,  and  which  have  furthermore  thrown  so  much  light  upon 
the  mental  life  of  the  adult.  The  careful  study  of  the  genesis  of 
mind  is  as  necessary  to  a  true  knowledge  of  mental  phenomena 
as  the  study  of  its  plan  of  development  confessedly  is  to  an 
adequate  conception  of  the  bodily  life. 

Again,  it  might  be  thought  a  monstrous  mistake  of  nature  to 
have  produced  so  many  idiots  and  lunatics,  seeing  that  the 
inductive  psychologists  take  no  notice  whatever  of  the  large 
collection  of  instances  afforded  by  these  unwelcome  anomalies. 
Certainly  it  may  be  said,  and  no  doubt  it  has  been  said,  that  the 
mental  phenomena  of  the  idiot  or  lunatic  are  morbid,  and  do  not, 
therefore,  concern  psychology.  It  is  true  that  they  do  not  con- 
cern a  psychology  which  violently  separates  itself  from  nature. 
But  it  is  exactly  because  psychology  has  thus  unwarrantably 
severed  itself  from  nature — of  which  the  so-called  morbid  phe- 


I.]  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  13 

nomena  are  no  less  natural  a  part  than  are  the  phenomena  of 
health — that  it  has  not  sure  foundations ;  that  it  is  not  inductive ; 
that  it  has  not  received  the  benefit  of  the  correction  which  a 
faithful  observation  of  the  unsound  mind  would  have  afforded. 
In  reality  insanity  furnishes  what  in  such  matter  ought  to  have 
been  seized  with  the  utmost  eagerness — for  they  cannot  be  made 
— namely,  actual  experiments  well  suited  to  the  establishment 
of  the  principles  of  a  truly  inductive  science.  The  laws  of 
mental  action  are  not  miraculously  changed  nor  reversed  in 
madness,  though  the  conditions  of  their  operation  are  different ; 
and  nature  does  not  recognise  the  artificial  and  ill-starred 
divisions  which  men,  for  the  sake  of  convenience,  and  not  un- 
frequently  in  the  interests  of  ignorance,  make. 

2.  Consciousness  gives  no  account  of  the  essential  material 
conditions  which  underlie  every  mental  manifestation,  and  de- 
termine the  character  of  it :  let  the  function  of  an  individual's 
optic  ganglia  be  abolished  by  disease  or  otherwise,  and  he  would 
not  be  conscious  that  he  was  blind  until  experience  had  con- 
vinced him  of  it.  On  grounds  which  will  not  easily  be  shaken 
it  is  now  indeed  admitted,  that  with  every  display  of  mental 
activity  there  is  a  correlative  change  or  waste  of  nervous 
element ;  and  on  the  condition  of  the  material  substratum  must 
depend  the  degree  and  character  of  the  manifested  energy  or  the 
mental  phenomenon.  Now  the  received  system  of  psychology 
gives  no  attention  to  these  manifold  variations  of  feeling  in  the 
same  individual,  which  are  due  to  temporary  modifications  of  the 
bodily  state,  and  by  which  the  ideas  of  the  relations  of  objects 
to  self  and  to  one  another  are  so  greatly  influenced.  The  quality 
of  the  ideas  which  arise  in  the  mind  under  certain  circumstances, 
the  whole  character,  indeed,  of  our  insight  at  the  time,  is  notably 
determined  in  great  part  by  the  feeling  which  may  then  have 
sway ;  and  that  feeling  is  not  always  objectively  caused,  but 
may  be  entirely  due  to  a  particular  bodily  condition,  as  the 
daily  experience  of  every  one  may  convince  him,  and  as  the 
earlier  phenomena  of  insanity  so  strikingly  illustrate. 

Again,  Bacon  long  ago  set  down  individual  psychology  as  want- 
ing ;  and  insisted  on  a  scientific  and  accurate  dissection  of  minds 
and  characters,  and  the  secret  dispositions  of  particular  men,  so 
"  that  from  the  knowledge  thereof  better  rules  may  be  framed 


14  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP. 

for  the  treatment  of  mind."  (4)  As  far  as  the  present  psychology 
is  concerned,  the  individual  might  have  no  existence  in  nature  ; 
he  is  an  inconvenience  to  a  system  which,  in  neglecting  the 
individual  constitution  or  temperament,  ignores  another  large 
collection  of  valuable  instances.  As  far  as  truth  is  concerned, 
however,  the  individual  is  of  some  moment,  seeing  that  he  often 
positively  contradicts  the  principles  arbitrarily  laid  down  by  a 
theoretical  system. 

When  the  theologist,  who  occupies  himself  with  the  supersen- 
suous,  has  said  all  that  he  has  to  say  from  his  point  of  view ; 
when  the  jurist,  who  represents  those  principles  which  the 
wisdom  of  society  has  established,  has  in  turn  exhaustively 
argued  from  his  point  of  view ;  then  the  ultimate  appeal  in  a 
concrete  case  must  be  to  the  physician,  who  deals  with  the  bodily 
life ;  through  his  ground  only  can  the  theologist  and  jurist  pass 
to  their  departments  ;  and  they  must  accept  their  knowledge  of 
it  from  him  :  on  the  foundation  of  facts  which  the  faithful  inves- 
tigation of  the  bodily  nature  lays,  must  rest,  if  they  are  to  rest 
safely,  their  systems.  Certainly  it  is  not  probable  that  this  most 
desirable  and  inevitable  result  will  come  to  pass  in  this  day  or 
generation ;  for  it  is  not  unknown  how  slowly  the  light  of  know- 
ledge penetrates  the  thick  fogs  of  ignorance,  nor  how  furiously 
irritated  prejudice  opposes  the  gentle  advent  of  new  truth.  Hap- 
pily, it  is  certain  that  in  the  mortality  of  man  lies  the  salvation 
of  truth. 

3.  There  is  an  appropriation  of  external  impressions  by  the 
mind  or  brain,  which  regularly  takes  place  without  any,  or  only 
with  a  very  obscure,  affection  of  consciousness.  As  the  various 
organs  of  the  body  select  from  the  blood  the  material  suitable  to 
their  nourishment,  and  assimilate  it,  so  the  organ  of  the  mind 
unconsciously  appropriates,  through  the  inlets  of  the  senses,  the 
influences  of  its  surroundings.  The  impressions  which  it  thus 
receives  and  retains  do  not  produce  definite  ideas  and  feelings, 
but  they  nevertheless  permanently  affect  the  mind's  nature ;  so 
that  as  an  individual  consciously  provides  his  food,  and  then 
leaves  the  due  assimilation  of  it  to  the  unconscious  action  of  the 
organism,  in  like  manner  may  he  consciously  arrange  the  cir- 
cumstances in  which  he  will  live,  but  cannot  then  prevent  the 
unconscious  assimilation  of  their  influence,  and  the  correspond- 


I.J  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  15 

ing  modification  of  his  character.  Not  only  slight  habits  of 
movement  are  thus  acquired,  but  habits  of  thought  and  feeling 
are  imperceptibly  organized  ;  so  that  an  acquired  nature  may 
ultimately  govern  one  who  is  not  at  all  conscious  that  he  has 
changed.  Let  any  one  take  careful  note  of  his  dreams,  and  he 
will  find  that  many  of  the  seemingly  unfamiliar  things  with 
which  his  mind  is  then  occupied,  and  which  appear  to  be  new 
and  strange  productions,  are  traceable  to  the  unconscious  appro- 
priations of  >the  day.  There  are  other  stories  on  record,  like  that 
of  the  servant-girl  which  Coleridge  quotes,  who,  in  the  ravings  of 
fever,  repeated  long  passages  in  the  Hebrew  language,  which  she 
did  not  understand,  and  could  not  repeat  when  well,  but  which, 
when  living  with  a  clergyman,  she  had  heard  him  read  aloud. 
The  remarkable  memories  of  certain  idiots,  who,  utterly  destitute 
of  intelligence,  will  repeat  the  longest  stories  with  the  greatest 
accuracy,  testify  also  to  this  unconscious  cerebral  action ;  and 
the  way  in  which  the  excitement  of  a  great  sorrow,  or  some  other 
cause,  as  the  last  flicker  of  departing  life,  will  sometimes  call 
forth  in  idiots  manifestations  of  mind  of  which  they  always 
seemed  incapable,  renders  it  certain  that  much  is  unconsciously 
taken  up  by  them  which  cannot  be  uttered,  but  which  leaves  its 
relics  in  the  mind. 

It  is  a  truth  which  cannot  be  too  distinctly  borne  in  mind, 
that  consciousness  is  not  co-extensive  with  mind.  From  the 
first  moment  of  its  independent  existence  the  brain  begins  to 
assimilate  impressions  from  without,  and  to  re-act  thereto  in 
corresponding  organic  adaptations  ;  this  it  does  at  first  without 
consciousness,  and  this  it  continues  to  do  unconsciously  more 
or  less  throughout  life.  Thus  it  is  that  mental  power  is  being 
organized  before  the  supervention  of  consciousness,  and  that  the 
mind  is  subsequently  regularly  modified  as  a  natural  process 
without  the  intervention  of  consciousness.  The  preconscious 
action  of  the  mind,  as  certain  metaphysical  psychologists  in 
Germany  have  called  it,  and  the  unconscious  action  of  the  mind, 
which  is  now  established  beyond  all  rational  doubt,  are  assuredly 
facts  of  which  the  most  ardent  psychologist  must  admit  that 
self-consciousness  can  give  us  no  account. 

4.  Everything  which  has  existed  with  any  completeness  in  con- 
sciousness is  preserved,  after  its  disappearance  therefrom,  in  the 


16  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP. 

mind  or  brain,  and  may  reappear  in  consciousness  at  some  future 
time.  That  which  persists  or  is  retained  has  been  differently 
described  as  a  residuum,  or  relic,  or  trace,  or  vestige,  or  again  as 
potential,  or  latent,  or  dormant  idea  ;  and  it  is  on  the  existence 
of  such  residua  that  memory  depends.  Not  only  definite  ideas, 
however,  but  all  affections  of  the  nervous  system,  feelings  of 
pleasure  and  pain,  desires,  and  even  its  outward  reactions,  thus 
leave  behind  them  their  residua,  and  lay  the  foundations  of  modes 
of  thought,  feeling,  and  action.  Particular  talents  are  sometimes 
formed  quite,  or  almost  quite,  involuntarily ;  and  complex  actions, 
which  were  first  consciously  performed  by  dint  of  great  applica- 
tion, become  by  repetition  automatic  ;  ideas,  which  were  at  first 
consciously  associated,  ultimately  call  one  another  up  without 
any  consciousness,  as  we  see  in  the  quick  perception  or  intuition 
of  the  man  of  large  worldly  experience ;  and  feelings,  once  active, 
leave  behind  them  their  unconscious  residua,  thus  affecting  the 
general  tone  of  the  character,  so  that,  apart  from  the  original  or 
inborn  nature  of  the  individual,  contentment,  melancholy,  cow- 
ardice, bravery,  and  even  moral  feeling,  are  generated  as  the 
results  of  particular  life  experiences.  Consciousness  is  not  able 
to  give  any  account  of  the  manner  in  which  these  various  residua 
are  perpetuated,  and  how  they  exist  latent  in  the  mind  ;  but  a 
fever,  a  poison  in  the  blood,  or  a  dream,  may  at  any  moment  recall 
ideas,  feelings,  and  activities  which  seemed  for  ever  vanished  The 
lunatic  sometimes  reverts,  in  his  ravings,  to  scenes  and  events  of 
which,  when  in  his  sound  senses,  he  has  no  memory  ;  the  fever- 
stricken  patient  may  pour  out  passages  in  a  language  which  he 
understands  not,  but  which  he  has  accidentally  heard ;  a  dream 
of  being  at  school  again  brings  back  with  painful  vividness  the 
school  feelings ;  and  before  him  who  is  drowning  every  event 
of  his  life  seems  to  flash  in  one  moment  of  strange  and  vivid 
consciousness. 

It  has  been  before  said  that  mind  and  consciousness  are  not 
synonymous ;  it  may  now  be  added,  that  the  existence  of  mind 
does  not  necessarily  involve  the  activity  of  mind.  Descartes 
certainly  maintained  that  the  mind  always  thinks ;  and  others, 
resting  on  that  assumption,  have  held  that  we  must  always 
dream  in  sleep,  because  the  mind,  being  spiritual,  cannot  cease 
to  act ;  for  non-activity  would  be  non-existence.  Such  opinions 


I.]  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  \J 

only  illustrate  how  completely  metaphysical  conceptions  may 
overrule  the  best  understanding ;  so  far  from  the  mind  being 
always  active,  it  is  the  fact  that  at  each  moment  the  greater  part 
of  the  mind  is  not  only  unconscious  but  inactive.  Mental  power 
exists  in  statical  equilibrium  as  well  as  in  manifested  energy ; 
and  the  utmost  tension  of  a  particular  mental  activity  may  not 
avail  to  call  forth  from  their  secret  repository  the  dormant  ener- 
gies of  latent  residua,  even  when  most  urgently  needed  :  no  man 
can  call  to  mind  at  any  moment  the  thousandth  part  of  his 
knowledge.  How  utterly  helpless  is  consciousness  to  give  any 
account  of  the  statical  condition  of  mind  !  But  as  statical  mind 
is  in  reality  the  statical  condition  of  the  organic  element  which 
ministers  to  its  manifestations,  it  is  plain  that  if  we  ever  are  to 
know  anything  of  inactive  mind  it  is  to  the  progress  of  physiology 
that  we  must  look  for  information. 

5.  Consciousness  reveals  nothing  of  the  process  by  which  one 
idea  calls  another  into  activity,  and  has  no  control  whatever  over 
the  manner  of  the  reproduction ;  it  is  only  when  the  idea  is  made 
active  by  virtue  of  some  association,  when  the  effect  solicits  or 
extorts  attention,  that  we  are  conscious  of  it ;  and  there  is  no 
power  in  the  mind  to  call  up  ideas  indifferently.  If  we  would 
recollect  something  wThich  at  the  moment  escapes  us,  the  best 
way  of  succeeding  confessedly  is  to  permit  the  mind  to  work 
unconsciously ;  and  while  the  consciousness  is  otherwise  occu- 
pied, the  forgotten  name  or  circumstance  will  oftentimes  flash 
into  the  memory.  In  composition  the  writer's  consciousness  is 
engaged  chiefly  with  his  pen  and  with  the  sentences  which  he  is 
forming,  while  the  results  of  the  mind's  unconscious  working 
flow,  as  it  were,  from  unknown  depths  into  consciousness,  and 
are  by  its  help  embodied  in  appropriate  words. 

Not  only  is  the  actual  process  of  the  association  of  our  ideas 
independent  of  consciousness,  but  that  assimilation  or  blending 
of  similar  ideas,  or  of  the  like  in  different  ideas,  by  which  general 
ideas  are  formed,  is  in  no  way  under  the  control  or  cognizance  of 
consciousness.  When  the  like  in  two  perceptions  is  appropriated, 
while  that  in  which  they  differ  is  neglected,  it  would  seem*  to  be 
by  an  assimilative  action  of  the  nerve-cell  or  cells  of  the  brain 
which,  particularly  modified  by  the  first  impression,  have  an 
attraction  or  affinity  for  a  like  subsequent  impression :  the  cell 
3 


l?<  CX  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP. 

so  modified  and  so  ministering  takes  to  itself  that  which  is  suit- 
able and  which  it  can  assimilate,  or  make  of  the  same  kind  with 
itself,  while  it  rejects  for  appropriation  by  other  cells  that  which 
is  unlike  and  which  will  not  blend.  Now  this  organic  process 
takes  place,  like  the  organic  action  of  other  elements  of  the  body, 
quite  out  of  the  reach  of  consciousness  ;  we  are  not  aware  how 
our  general  and  abstract  ideas  are  formed ;  the  due  material  is 
consciously  supplied,  and  there  is  an  unconscious  elaboration  of 
the  result  Mental  development  thus  represents  a  sort  of  nutri- 
tion and  organization ;  or,  as  Milton  aptly  says  of  the  opinions 
of  good  men,  that  they  are  truth  in  the  making,  so  wye  may  truly 
say  of  the  formation  of  our  general  and  complex  ideas,  that  it  is 
mind  in  the  making.  When  the  individual  brain  is  a  well  con- 
stituted one,  and  has  been  duly  cultivated,  the  results  of  its  latent 
activity,  starting  into  consciousness  suddenly,  sometimes  appear 
like  intuitions  ;  they  are  strange  and  startling,  like  the  products 
of  a  dream  oi'ttimes  are,  to  the  mind  which  has  actually  produced 
them.  Hence  it  was  no  extravagant  fancy  in  Plato  that  he  looked 
upon  them  as  reminiscences  of  a  previous  higher  existence.  Plato's 
mind  was  a  mind  of  the  highest  order,  and  the  results  of  its 
unconscious  activity,  as  they  flashed  into  consciousness,  might 
well  seem  intuitions  of  a  better  life  quite  beyond  the  reach  of 
present  wilL 

But  the  process  of  unconscious  mental  elaboration  is  suffi- 
ciently illustrated  in  daily  experience.  In  dreams  some  can 
compose  vigorously  and  fluently,  or  speak  most  eloquently,  who 
can  do  nothing  of  the  sort  when  awake  ;  schoolboys  know  how 
much  a  night's  rest  improves  their  knowledge  of  a  lesson  which 
they  have  been  learning  before  going  to  bed ;  great  writers  or 
great  artists,  as  is  well  known,  have  been  truly  astonished  at 
their  own  creations,  and  cannot  conceive  how  they  contrived  to 
produce  them ;  and  to  the  unconscious  action  of  the  mind  is 
owing,  most  probably,  that  occasional  sudden  consciousness,  which 
almost  every  one  at  some  time  has,  of  having  been  before  in 
exactly  the  same  circumstances  as  those  which  are  then  happen- 
ing, though  the  thing  was  impossible ;  but  the  action  of  the 
mind  in  the  assimilation  of  events  here  anticipates  consciousness, 
which,  when  aroused,  finds  a  familiarity  in  them.  Inventions 
seem,  even  to  the  discoverers,  to  be  matters  of  accident  and  good 


1.1  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  19 

fortune;  the  most  voracious  plagiarist  is  commonly  the  most 
unconscious ;  the  best  thoughts  of  an  author  are  always  the 
unwilled  thoughts  which  surprise  himself;  and  the  poet  in  the 
inspiration  of  creative  activity  is,  so  far  as  consciousness  is 
concerned,  being  dictated  to.  If  we  reflect,  we  shall  see 
that  it  must  be  so  ;  the  products  of  creative  activity,  in  so  far 
as  they  transcend  the  hitherto  experienced,  are  unknown  to  the 
creator  himself  before  they  come  forth,  and  cannot  therefore 
be  the  result  of  a  definite  act  of  his  will ;  for  to  an  act  of  will  a 
conception  of  the  result  is  necessary.  "The  character,"  says 
Jean  Paul,  speaking  of  the  poet's  work, "  must  appear  living  before 
you,  and  you  must  hear  it,  not  merely  see  it ;  it  must,  as  takes 
place  in  dreams,  dictate  to  you,  not  you  to  it ;  and  so  much  so 
that  in  the  quiet  hour  before  you  might  perhaps  be  able  to  fore- 
tell the  what  but  not  the  Jww.  A  poet  who  must  reflect  whether 
in  a  given  case  he  shall  make  a  character  say  yes  or  no — to  the 
devil  with  him  :  he  is  only  a  stupid  corpse."* 

If  an  inherited  excellence  of  brain  has  conferred  upon  the  indi- 
vidual great  inborn  capacity,  it  is  well ;  but  if  he  has  not  such 
heritage,  then  no  amount  of  conscious  effort  will  completely  make 
up  for  the  defect.  As  in  the  germ  of  the  higher  animal  there  is 
the  potentiality  of  many  kinds  of  tissue,  while  in  the  germ  of  the 
lower  animal  there  is  only  the  potentiality  of  a  few  kinds  of 
tissue  ;  so  in  the  good  brain  of  a  happily  endowed  man  there  is 
the  potentiality  of  great  assimilation  and  of  great  and  varied  de- 
velopment, while  in  the  man  of  low  mental  endowment  there  is 
only  the  potentiality  of  a  scanty  assimilation  and  of  small  develop- 
ment. But  it  is  ridiculous  to  suppose  that  the  man  of  genius  is 
ever  a  fountain  of  self-generating  energy;  whosoever  expends 
much  in  productive  activity  must  take  much  in  by  appropriation; 
whence  comes  what  of  truth  there  is  in  the  observation  that 
genius  is  a  genius  for  industry.  To  believe  that  any  one,  how 
great  soever  his  natural  genius,  can  pour  forth  with  spontaneous 
ease  the  results  of  great  productive  activity,  without  correspond- 
ing labour  in  appropriation,  is  no  less  absurd  than  it  would  be  to 
believe  that  the  acorn  can  grow  into  the  mighty  monarch  of  the 
forest,  without  air  and  light,  and  without  the  kindly  influence  of 
the  soil. 

*  ^Esthetik. 


20  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP. 

It  has  been  previously  said  that  mental  action  does  not  neces- 
sarily imply  consciousness,  and  again,  that  mental  existence  does 
not  necessarily  involve  mental  activity  :  it  may  now  be  affirmed 
that  the  most  important  part  of  mental  action,  the  essential  pro- 
cess on  which  thinking  depends,  is  unconscious  mental  activity. 
We  repeat,  then,  the  question  :  how  can  self-consciousness  suffice 
to  furnish  the  facts  of  a  true  mental  science  ? 

6.  The  brain  not  only  receives  impressions  unconsciously, 
registers  impressions  without  the  co-operation  of  consciousness, 
elaborates  material  unconsciously,  calls  latent  residua  again  into 
activity  without  consciousness,  but  it  responds  also  as  an  organ 
of  organic  life  to  the  internal  stimuli  which  it  receives  uncon- 
sciously from  other  organs  of  the  body.  As  the  central  organ  to 
which  the  various  organic  stimuli  of  a  complex  whole  pass,  and 
where  they  are  duly  co-ordinated,  it  must  needs  have  most  im- 
portant and  intimate  sympathies  with  the  other  parts  of  the 
harmonious  system ;  and  a  regular  quiet  activity  of  which  we 
only  become  occasionally  conscious  in  its  abnormal  results  does 
prevail,  as  the  consequence  and  expression  of  these  organic  sym- 
pathies. On  the  whole,  this  activity  is  even  of  more  consequence 
in  determining  the  character  of  our  feeling,  or  the  tone  of  our 
disposition,  than  that  which  follows  impressions  received  from 
the  external  world ;  when  disturbed  in  a  painful  way,  it  becomes 
the  occasion  of  that  feeling  of  gloom  or  discomfort  which  does 
not  itself  give  rise  to  anything  more  than  an  indefinite  antici- 
pation of  coming  affliction,  but  which  renders  ideas  that  arise 
obscure,  unfaithfully  representative,  and  painful.  The  rapidity 
and  success  of  conception,  and  the  reaction  of  one  conception 
upon  another,  are  much  affected  by  the  state  of  this  active  but 
unconscious  cerebral  life  :  the  poet  is  compelled  to  wait  for  the 
moment  of  inspiration  ;  and  the  thinker,  after  great  but  fruitless 
pains,  must  often  tarry  until  a  more  favourable  disposition  of 
mind.  In  insanity,  the  influence  of  this  activity  is  most  marked  ; 
for  it  then  happens  that  the  morbid  state  of  some  internal  organ 
becomes  the  basis  of  a  painful  but  formless  feeling  of  profound 
depression,  which  ultimately  condenses  into  some  definite  delu- 
sion. In  dreams,  its  influence  is  no  less  manifest ;  for  he  who 
has  gone  to  sleep  with  a  disturbance  of  some  internal  organ  may 
find  the  character  of  his  dreams  determined  by  the  feeling  of 


L]  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  21 

the  repression  of  self  of  which  the  organic  trouble  is  the  cause ; 
he  is  thwarted,  he  is  afflicted,  he  is  at  school  again,  or  under 
sentence  of  death ;  in  some  way  or  other  his  personality  is 
oppressed.  Most  plainly  of  all,  however,  does  the  influence  of 
the  sexual  organs  upon  the  mind  witness  to  this  operation ;  and 
it  was  no  wild  flight  of  '  that  noted  liar  fancy'  in  Schlegel,  but  a 
truly  grounded  creation  of  the  imagination,  that  he  represented 
a  pregnant  woman  as  being  visited  every  night  by  a  beautiful 
child,  which  gently  raised  her  eyelids  and  looked  silently  at  her, 
but  which  disappeared  for  ever  after  delivery.*  Whatever  then 
may  be  thought  of  the  theory  of  Bichat,  who  located  the  passions 
in  the  organs  of  organic  life,  it  must  be  admitted  that  he  therein 
evinced  a  just  recognition  of  the  importance  of  that  unconscious 
cerebral  activity  which  is  the  expression  of  the  organic  sym- 
pathies of  the  brain. 

In  dealing  with  unconscious  mental  activity,  and  with  mind 
in  a  statical  condition,  it  has  been  a  necessity  to  speak  of  brain 
and  cerebral  action  where  I  would  willingly,  to  avoid  offence 
that  might  be  taken  thereat,  have  spoken,  had  it  been  possible, 
of  mind  and  mental  action  ;  but  it  was  impossible,  if  one  was  to 
be  truthful  and  intelligible,  to  do  otherwise.  "When  the  impor- 
tant influence  on  mental  life  of  the  brain  as  an  organ  of  organic 
life  comes  to  be  considered,  there  are  no  words  available  for 
expressing  the  phenomena  in  the  language  of  the  received 
psychology,  which,  though  it  admits  the  brain  to  be  the  organ  of 
the  mind,  takes  no  notice  whatever  of  it  as  an  organ.  Let  us 
briefly  add,  then,  what  the  relations  of  the  brain  as  a  bodily 
organ  are. 

1.  The  brain  has,  as  previously  set  forth,  a  life  of  relation ; 
which  may  be  properly  distinguished  into — (a)  a  relation  with 
external  nature  through  the  inlets  of  the  senses  ;  and  (&)  a  rela- 
tion with  the  other  organs  of  the  body,  through  the  nervous 
system  distributed  throughout  the  body.  These  have  already 
been  sufficiently  dwelt  upon  here  ;  they  will  receive  fuller  atten- 
tion afterwards. 


*  "  In  Schlegel's  viel  zu  \venig  erkanntem  Flcrentin  sieht  eine  Schwansrere 
immer  ein  schbnes  "Wunderkind,  das  mit  ihr  nachts  die  Augen  aufschlagt,  ihr 
stumm  entgegen  la'uft  u.  s.  w.  und  welches  unter  der  Entbindung  auf  immer 
verschwindet." — Jean  Paul's  ^Esthctik. 


22  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP. 

2.  But  the  brain  has  also  a  life  of  nutrition,  or,  if  we  might  so 
call  it,  a  vegetative  life.  In  this  its  true  organic  life  there  is  a 
nutritive  assimilation  of  suitable  material  from  the  blood  by  the 
nerve-cell,  and  a  restoration  thereby  of  the  statical  equilibrium 
after  each  display  of  energy.  The  extent  of  the  nutritive  repair 
and  the  mould  which  it  takes  must  plainly  be  determined  by 
the  extent  and  form  of  the  waste  which  has  been  the  condition 
of  the  display  of  function  :  the  material  change  or  waste  in  the 
nervous  cell,  which  the  activity  of  an  idea  implies,  is  replaced 
from  the  blood  according  to  the  mould  or  pattern  of  the  par- 
ticular idea  ;  statical  idea  thus  following  through  the  agency  of 
nutritive  attraction  upon  the  waste  through  functional  repulsion  of 
active  idea.  This  organic  process  of  repair  is  not  usually  attended 
with  consciousness,  and  yet  it  may  obtrude  itself  into  conscious- 
ness :  as  the  function  of  any  organ,  which  proceeds  when  all  is 
well  without  exciting  any  sensation,  does,  under  conditions  of 
disorder,  give  rise  to  unusual  sensation  or  to  actual  pain  ;  so  the 
organic  life  of  the  brain,  which  usually  passes  peaceably  without 
exciting  consciousness,  may  under  certain  conditions  thrust 
itself  forward  into  consciousness  and  produce  anomalous  effects. 
When  this  happens,  the  abnormal  effect  is  not  manifest  in  sen- 
sation, for  the  hemispheres  of  the  brain,  as  physiologists  well 
know,  are  not  sensitive  in  that  sense  ;  but  it  is  displayed  in  the 
involuntary  appearance  of  emotional  ideas  in  consciousness,  and 
in  consequent  confusion  of  thought ;  the  statical  idea  becomes 
energy,  not  through  the  usual  train  of  association,  but  by  reason 
of  the  abnormal  stimulus  from  the  inner  life.  Thus  it  is  tha^ 
the  presence  of  alcohol,  or  some  other  such  foreign  agent,  in  the 
blood  will  excite  into  activity  ideas  which  lie  out  of  the  usual 
path  of  association,  which  the  utmost  tension  of  consciousness 
would  fail  to  arouse,  and  which  the  will  cannot  repress  nor 
control.  Whosoever  will  be  at  the  pains  of  attending  to  his 
own  daily  experience  will  find  that  ideas  frequently  arise  into 
consciousness  without  any  apparent  relation  to  those  previously 
active,  without,  in  fact,  any  possibility  of  explaining,  quoad 
consciousness,  why  and  whence  they  come  (5). 

To  what  has  been  before  said  of  unconscious  mental  action 
this  more  may  now  be  added — that  the  deep  basis  of  all  mental 
action  lies  in  the  organic  life  of  the  brain,  the  characteristic  of 


,.]  TEE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  23 

which  in  health  is,  that  it  proceeds  without  consciousness.  He 
whose  brain  makes  him  conscious  that  he  has  a  brain  is  not  well, 
but  ill ;  and  thought  that  is  conscious  of  itself  is  not  natural  and 
healthy  thought.  How  little  competent,  then,  is  consciousness 
to  supply  the  facts  of  an  inductive  science  of  mind !  Pneuma- 
tology  was  at  one  time  subdivided  into  theology,  demonology,  and 
psychology ;  all  three  resting  on  the  evidence  of  the  inner  wit- 
ness. Demonology  has  taken  its  place  in  the  history  of  human 
error  and  superstition;  theology  is  confessedly  now  best  sup- 
ported by  those  who  ascend  from  nature's  law  up  to  nature's 
God ;  and  psychology,  generally  forsaken,  stays  its  fall  by  appro- 
priating the  discoveries  of  physiology,  preserving  only  in  its 
nomenclature  the  shadow  of  its  ancient  authority  and  state.  On 
what  foundation  can  a  science  of  mind  surely  rest  save  on  the 
faithful  observation  of  all  available  instances,  whether  psychical 
or  physiological  ? 

Such  are  the  charges  against  self-consciousness  whereon  is 
founded  the  conclusion  as  to  its  incompeteucy :  they  show  that 
he  who  thinks  to  illuminate  the  whole  range  of  mental  action  by 
the  light  of  his  own  consciousness  is  not  unlike  one  who  should  go 
about  to  illuminate  the  universe  with  a  rushlight.  A  reflection 
on  the  true  nature  of  consciousness  will  surely  tend  to  confirm 
that  opinion.  Whoever  faithfully  and  firmly  endeavours  tc 
obtain  a  definite  idea  of  what  is  meant  by  consciousness,  will 
find  it  nowise  so  easy  a  matter  as  the  frequent  and  ready  use  of 
the  word  might  imply.  Metaphysicians,  faithful  to  the  vague- 
ness of  their  ideas,  and  definite  only  in  individual  assumption, 
are  by  no  means  agreed  in  the  meaning  which  they  attach  to  it ; 
and  it  sometimes  happens  that  the  same  metaphysician  uses  the 
word  in  two  or  three  different  senses  in  different  parts  of  his 
book  :  it  is  at  one  time  synonymous  \rith  mind,  at  another 
time  with  knowledge,  and  at  another  time  it  is  used  to  express 
a  condition  of  mental  activity.  That  there  should  be  such  little 
certainty  about  that  upon  which  their  philosophy  fundamentally 
rests  must  be  allowed  to  be  a  misfortune  to  the  metaphysicians. 

"\Vhat  consciousness  is  will  appear  better  if  its  relations  be 
closely  examined  without  prejudice.  It  will  then  appear  that  it 
is  not  separable  from  knowledge  ;  that  it  exists  only  as  a  part  of 
the  concrete  mental  act ;  that  it  has  no  more  power  of  withdraw- 


24  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP. 

ing  from  the  particular  phenomenon  and  of  taking  full  and  fair 
observation  of  it,  than  a  boy  has  of  jumping  over  his  own  shadow. 
Consciousness  is  not  a  faculty  or  substance,  but  a  quality  or 
attribute  of  the  concrete  mental  act ;  and  it  may  exist  in  differ- 
ent degrees  of  intensity  or  it  may  be  absent  altogether.  In  so 
far  as  there  is  consciousness,  there  is  certainly  mental  activity  ; 
but  it  is  not  true  that  in  so  far  as  there  is  mental  activity  there 
is  consciousness  ;  it  is  only  with  a  certain  intensity  of  representa- 
tion or  conception  that  consciousness  appears.  "What  else,  then, 
is  the  so-called  interrogation  of  consciousness  but  a  self-revela- 
tion of  the  particular  mental  act,  whose  character  it  must  needs 
share  ?  Consciousness  can  never  be  a  valid  and  unprejudiced 
witness  ;  for  although  it  testifies  to  the  existence  of  a  particular 
subjective  modification,  yet  when  that  modification  has  anything 
of  a  morbid  character,  consciousness  is  affected  by  the  taint  and 
is  morbid  also.  Accordingly,  the  lunatic  appeals  to  the  evidence 
of  his  own  consciousness  for  the  truth  gf  his  hallucination  or 
delusion,  and  insists  that  he  has  as  sure  evidence  of  its  reality  as 
he  has  of  the  argument  of  any  one  who  may  try  to  convince  him 
of  his  error ;  and  he  is  right :  to  one  who  has  vertigo  the 
world  turns  round.  A  man  may  easily  be  conscious  of  freewill 
when,  isolating  the  particular  mental  act,  he  cuts  himself  off  from 
the  consideration  of  the  causes  which  have  preceded  it,  and  on 
which  it  depends.  "  There  is  no  force,"  says  Leibnitz,  "  in  the 
reason  alleged  by  Descartes  to  prove  the  independence  of  our 
free  actions  by  a  pretended  lively 'internal  sentiment.  It  is  as  if 
the  needle  should  take  pleasure  in  turning  to  the  north ;  for  it 
would  suppose  that  it  turned  independently  of  any  other  cause, 
not  perceiving  the  insensible  motions  of  the  magnetic  matter."* 
Is  it  not  supremely  ridiculous  that  while  we  cannot  trust  con- 
sciousness in  so  simple  a  matter  as  whether  we  are  hot  or  cold, 
we  should  be  content  to  rely  entirely  on  its  evidence  in  the  com- 
plex phenomena  of  our  highest  mental  activity  ?  The  truth  is, 
that  what  has  very  often  happened  before  has  happened  here  : 
the  quality  or  attribute  has  been  abstracted  from  the  concrete, 
and  the  abstraction  then  converted  into  an  entity ;  the  attribute, 
consciousness,  has  miraculously  got  rid  of  its  substance,  and  with 
a  wonderful  assurance  assumed  the  office  of  passing  judgment 

*  Essais  de  Tlicodicee,  Pt.  I. 


I.]  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  25 

upon  its  nature.  Descartes  was  in  this  case  the  clever  architect ; 
and  his  success  has  fully  justified  his  art :  while  the  metaphy- 
sical stage  of  human  development  lasts,  his  work  will  doubtless 
endure. 

That  the  subjective  method,  the  method  of  interrogating  self- 
consciousness,  is  not  adequate  to  the  construction  of  a  true 
mental  science,  has  now  seemingly  been  sufficiently  established. 
This  is  not  to  say  that  it  is  worthless  ;  for  when  not  strained 
beyond  its  capabilities,  its  results  may,  in  the  hands  of  competent 
men,  be  very  useful.  D'Alembert  compares  Locke  to  Newton,  and 
makes  it  a  special  praise  to  him  that  he  was  content  to  descend 
within,  and  that,  after  having  contemplated  himself  for  a  long 
while,  he  presented  in  his  '  Essay '  the  mirror  in  which  he  had 
seen  himself ;  "  in  a  word,  he  reduced  psychology  to  that  which 
it  should  be,  the  experimental  physics  of  the  mind."  But  it  was 
not  because  of  this  method,  but  in  spite  of  it,  that  Locke  was 
greatly  successful ;  it  was  because  he  possessed  a  powerful  and 
well-balanced  mind,  the  direct  utterances  of  which  he  sincerely 
expressed,  that  the  results  which  he  obtained,  in  whatever 
nomenclature  they  may  be  clothed,  are  and  ever  will  be  valuable ; 
they  are  the  self-revelations  of  an  excellently  constituted  and 
well-trained  mind.  The  insufficiency  of  the  method  used  is 
proved  by  the  fact  that  others  adopting  it,  but  wanting  his  sound 
sense,  directly  contradicted  him  at  the  time,  and  do  so  still. 
Furthermore,  Locke  did  not  confine  himself  to  the  interrogation 
of  his  own  consciousness ;  for  he  introduced  the  practice — for 
which  Cousin  was  so  angry  with  him — of  referring  to  savages 
and  children.  And  we  may  take  leave  to  suggest  that  the  most 
valuable  part  of  Locke's  psychology,  that  which  has  been  a 
lasting  addition  to  knowledge,  really  was  the  result  of  the  em- 
ployment of  the  inductive  or  rather  objective  method.*  Nay 
more :  if  any  one  will  be  at  the  pains  to  examine  into  the  history 
of  the  development  of  psychology  up  to  its  present  stage,  he  may 
be  surprised  to  find  how  much  the  important  acquisitions  of  new 
truth  and  the  corrections  of  old  errors  have  been  due,  not  to  the 
interrogation  of  self-consciousness,  but  to  external  observation, 
though  it  was  not  recognised  as  a  systematic  method.  The  past 
history  of  psychology — its  instinctive  progress,  so  to  speak — no 
*  Psychology  cannot,  in  fact,  be  truly  inductive  unless  it  is  studied  objectively. 


2i>  ON"  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP. 

less  than  the  consideration  of  its  present  state,  proves  the 
necessity  of  admitting  the  objective  method. 

That  which  a  just  reflection  iiicontestably  teaches,  the  present 
state  of  physiology  practically  illustrates.  Though  very  im- 
perfect as  a  science,  physiology  is  still  sufficiently  advanced  to 
prove  that  no  psychology  can  endure  except  it  be  based  upon  its 
investigations.  Let  it  not,  moreover,  be  forgotten,  as  it  is  so  apt 
to  be,  that  the  divisions  in  our  knowledge  are  artificial ;  that 
they  should  be  accepted,  and  used  rather,  as  Bacon  says,  "  for 
lines  to  mark  or  distinguish,  than  sections  to  divide  and  separate ; 
in  order  that  solution  of  continuity  in  sciences  may  always  be 
avoided."*  Not  the  smallest  atom  that  floats  in  the  sunbeam, 
nor  the  minutest  molecule  that  vibrates  within  the  microcosm  of 
an  organic  cell,  but  is  bound  as  a  part  of  the  mysterious  whole  in 
an  inextricable  harmony  with  the  laws  by  which  planets  move  in 
their  appointed  orbits,  or  with  the  laws  which  govern  the  mar- 
vellous-creations of  godlike  genius.  Above  all  things  it  is  now 
necessary  that  the  absolute  and  unholy  barrier  set  up  between 
psychical  and  physical  nature  be  broken  down,  and  that  a  just  con- 
ception of  mind  be  formed,  founded  on  a  faithful  recognition  of  all 
those  phenomena  of  nature  which  lead  by  imperceptible  gradations 
up  to  this  its  highest  evolution.  Happily  the  beneficial  change  is 
being  gradually  effected,  and  ignorant  prejudice  or  offended  self- 
love  in  vain  opposes  a  progress  in  knowledge  which  reflects  the 
course  of  progress  in  nature  :  the  stars  in  their  courses  fight-  for 
such  truth,  and  its  angry  adversary  might  as  well  hope  to  blow 
out  with  his  pernicious  breath  the  all-inspiring  light  of  the  sun 
as  to  extinguish  its  ever  waxing  splendour. 

No  one  pretends  that  physiology  can  for  many  years  to  come 
furnish  the  complete  data  of  a  positive  mental  science  :  all  that 
it  can  at  present  do  is  to  overthrow  the  data  of  a  false  psychology. 
It  is  easy,  no  doubt,  for  any  one  to  point  to  the  completeness  of 
our  ignorance,  and  to  maintain  that  physiology  never  will  securely 
fix  the  foundations  of  a  mental  science,  just  as  it  was  easy  to  say, 
before  the  invention  of  the  telescope,  that  the  ways  of  the  planets 
could  never  be  traced  and  calculated.  The  confident  dogmatist 
in  this  matter  might  well  learn  caution  from  the  following 
example  of  the  rash  error  of  a  greater  man  than  himself : — "  It  is 
*  De  Angraentis  Scientiarum,  B.  iv. 


i.]  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  2? 

the  absurdity  of  these  opinions,"  said  Bacon,  "  that  has  driven 
men  to  the  diurnal  motion  of  the  earth  ;  which,  I  am  convinced, 
is  most  false."*  What  should  fairly  and  honestly  be  weighed  is, 
that  mind  is  the  last,  the  highest,  the  consummate  evolution  of 
nature's  development,  and  that,  therefore,  it  must  be  the  last,  the 
most  complex,  and  most  difficult  object  of  human  study.  There 
are  really  no  grounds  for  expecting  a  positive  science  of  mind  at 
present ;  for  to  its  establishment  the  completion  of  the  other 
sciences  is  necessary ;  and,  as  is  well  known,  it  is  only  lately 
that  the  metaphysical  spirit  has  been  got  rid  of  in  astronomy, 
physics,  and  chemistry,  and  that  these  sciences,  after  more  than 
two  thousand  years  of  idle  and  shifting  fancies,  have  attained  to 
certain  principles.  Still  more  recently  has  physiology  emerged 
from  the  fog,  and  that  for  obvious  reasons  :  in  the  first  place  it 
is  absolutely  dependent  upon  the  physical  and  chemical  sciences, 
and  must,  therefore,  wait  for  the  progress  of  them  ;  and  in  the 
second  place,  its  close  relations  to  psychology  have  tended  to 
keep  it  the  victim  of  the  metaphysical  spirit.  That,  therefore, 
which  should  be  in  this  matter  is  that  which  is  ;  and  instead  of 
being  a  cause  of  despair,  is  a  ground  of  hope. 

But  let  it  not  be  forgotten  that  the  physiological  method  is 
only  one  (I.)  division  of  the  objective  method ;  there  are  other 
divisions  not  less  valuable : — 

II.  The  study  of  the  plan  of  development  of  mind,  as  exhibited 
in  the  animal,  the  barbarian,  and  the  infant,  furnishes  results  of 
the  greatest  value,  and  is  as  essential  to  a  true  mental  science  as 
the  study  of  its  development  confessedly  is  to  a  full  knowledge 
of  the  bodily  organism.     By  that  means  we  get  at  the  deep  and 
true  relations  of  phenomena,  and  are  enabled  to  correct  the 
erroneous  inferences  of  a  superficial  observation ;  by  examination 
of  the  barbarian,  for  example,  we  eliminate  the  hypocrisy  which 
is  the  result  of  the  social  condition,  and  which  is  apt  to  mislead 
us  in  the  civilized  individual 

III.  The  study  of  the  degeneration  of  mind,  as  exhibited  in  the 
different  forms  of  idiocy  and  insanity,  is  indispensable  as  it  is 
invaluable.     So  we  avail  ourselves  of  the  experiments  provided 
by  nature,  and  bring  our  generalizations  to  a  most  searching  test. 
Hitherto  the  phenomena  of  insanity  have  been  most  grievously 

*  De  Augmentis  Scientiarum,  B.  iii. 


28  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP. 

misinterpreted  by  the  vulgar,  because  interpreted  by  the  false 
conclusions  of  a  subjective  psychology.  Had  not  the  revelations 
of  consciousness  in  dreams  and  in  delirium  been  completely 
ignored  by  the  professed  inductive  psychologists,  truer  generali- 
zations must  perforce  ere  this  have  been  formed,  and  fewer 
irresponsible  lunatics  would  have  been  executed  as  respon- 
sible criminals.  Why  those  who  put  so  much  faith  in  the 
subjective  method  do  reject  such  a  large  and  important  collection 
of  instances  as  dreams  and  madmen  furnish,  they  have  never 
thought  proper  to  explain. 

IV.  The  study  of  the  progress  or  regress  of  the  human  mind, 
as  exhibited  in  history,  most  difficult  as  the  task  is,  cannot  be 
neglected  by  one  who  wishes  to  be  thoroughly  equipped  for  the 
arduous  work  of  constructing  a  positive  mental  science.  The 
unhappy  tendencies  which  lead  to  individual  error  and  degene- 
ration are  those  which  on  a  national  scale  conduct  peoples  to 
destruction ;  and  the  nisus  of  an  epoch  is  summed  up  in  the 
biography  of  its  great  man.  Freed  from  the  many  disturbing 
conditions  which  interfere  so  much  with  his  observation  of  the 
individual,  the  philosopher  may  perhaps  in  history  discover  the 
laws  of  human  progress  in  their  generality  and  simplicity,  as 
Newton  discovered  in  the  motions  of  the  heavenly  bodies  the 
law  which  he  would  in  vain  have  looked  for  had  he  watched  the 
fall  of  every  apple  in  Europe. 

May  we  not  then  truly  say  that  he  only  is  the  true  psycho- 
logist who,  occupied  with  the  observation  of  the  whole  of  human 
nature,  avails  himself  not  only  of  every  means  which  science 
affords  for  the  investigation  of  the  bodily  conditions  which 
assuredly  underlie  every  display  of  function,  conscious  or  uncon- 
scious, but  also  of  every  help  which  is  furnished  by  the  mental 
manifestations  of  animal  and  of  man,  whether  undeveloped, 
degenerate,  or  cultivated  ?  Here,  as  everywhere  else  in  nature, 
the  student  must  deliberately  apply  himself  to  a  close  com- 
munion with  the  external,  must  intend  his  mind  to  the  realities 
which  surround  him,  and  thus  by  patient  internal  adjustment  to 
outward  relations  gradually  evolve  into  conscious  development 
those  inner  truths  which  are  the  unavoidable  expressions  of  the 
harmony  between  himself  and  nature.  Of  old  it  was  the  fashion 
to  try  to  explain  nature  from  a  very  incomplete  knowledge  of 


I.]  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  29 

man;  but  it  is  the  certain  tendency  of  advancing  science  to 
explain  man  on  the  basis  of  a  perfecting  knowledge  of  nature. 

Having  fairly  admitted  a  method,  it  behoves  us  to  take  heed 
that  we  are  not  too  exclusive  in  its  application.  To  this  there  is 
a  strong  inclination :  even  in  the  investigation  of  physical  nature 
men  now  frequently  write  of  induction  as  Bacon  himself  never 
wrote  of  it.  It  might  seem  from  the  usual  fashion  of  speech 
that  the  function  of  the  mind  was  merely  that  of  a  polished  and 
passive  mirror,  in  which  natural  phenomena  should  be  allowed 
simply  to  reflect  themselves  ;  whereas  every  state  of  conscious- 
ness is  a  developmental  result  of  the  relation  between  mind  and 
the  impression,  of  the  subject  and  object.  What  Bacon  strove 
so  earnestly  to  abolish  was  that  method  of  systematically  looking 
into  the  mind  and,  by  torture  of  self-consciousness,  drawing 
thence  empty  ideas,  as  the  spider  forms  a  web  out  of  its  own 
substance,  that  ill-starred  divorce  between  mind  and  nature 
which  had  been  cultivated  by  the  Schoolmen  as  a  method. 
What  he  wished,  on  the  other  hand,'  to  establish  was  a  happy 
marriage  between  mind  and  matter,  between  subject  and  object, 
to  prevent  the  "  mind  being  withdrawn  from  things  longer  than 
was  necessary  to  bring  into  a  harmonious  conjunction  the  ideas 
and  the  impressions  made  upon  the  senses."  *  For,  as  he  says, 

*  "  Nos  vero  intellectum  longius  k  rebus  non  abstrahimus  quam  ut  rerum 
imagines  et  radii  (ut  in  sensu  fit)  coire  possint."  ('Proleg.  Instaurat.  Magn.')  This 
passage,  as  usually  rendered,  is  not  intelligible  ;  the  translation  in  the  text,  if  not 
literally  exact,  evidently,  as  the  context  proves,  expresses  Bacon's  true  meaning. 
He  had  objected  to  all  before  him  that  some  had  •wrongly  regarded  the  sense  as 
the  measure  of  things,  while  others,  equally  wrongly,  "  after  having  only  a  little 
while  turned  their  eyes  upon  things,  and  instances,  and  experience,  then  straight- 
way, as  if  invention  were  nothing  more  than  a  certain  process  of  excogitation, 
have  fallen,  as  it  were,  to  invoke  their  own  spirits  to  utter  oracles  to  them.  But 
we,"  he  goes  on,  "modestly  and  perseveringly  keeping  ourselves  conversant  among 
things,  never  withdraw  our  understanding,"  &c.  Mr.  Spedding,  in  his  admirable 
edition  of  Bacon's  works,  translates  the  passage  thus  : — "  I,  on  the  contrary,  with- 
draw my  intellect  from  them  no  further  than  may  suffice  to  let  the  images  and 
rays  of  natural  objects  meet  in  a  point,  as  they  do  in  the  sense  of  vision." 
According  to  this  interpretation, — if  there  really  is  any  meaning  in  it— the  images 
and  rays  of  objects  express  the  same  thing.  Mr.  Wood's  translation,  in  Mr. 
Montagu's  edition,  is  : — "  We  abstract  our  understanding  no  further  from  them 
than  is  necessary  to  prevent  the  confusion  of  the  images  of  things  with  their 
radiation,  a  confusion  similar  to  that  we  experience  by  our  senses."  This  is  worse 
still  ;  ut  possint  coire  means,  certainly,  that  they  may  come  together,  not  that 
they  may  not  mingle  or  may  be  prevented  from  mingling.  After  all,  the  95th 
aphorism  furnishes  the  clearest  and  surest  commentary  on  the  passage — "  Those 


30  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP, 

the  testimony  and  information  of  the  senses  have  reference  always 
to  man,  not  to  the  universe  ;  and  it  is  a  great  error,  therefore,  to 
assert  that  the  sense  is  the  measure  of  things.  But  by  his 
method  of  effecting,  as  completely  as  possible,  a  reconciliation 
between  the  subjective  and  objective,  he  hoped  to  have  "estab- 
lished for  ever  a  true  and  lawful  marriage  between  the  empirical 
and  the  rational  faculty,  the  unkind  and  ill-starred  divorce  and 
separation  of  which  has  thrown  into  confusion  all  the  affairs  of 
the  human  family."  The  mind  that  is  in  harmony  with  the 
laws  of  nature,  in  an  intimate  sympathy  with  the  course  of 
events,  is  strong  with  the  strength  of  nature,  and  is  developed 
by  its  force. 

A  contemplation  of  the  earliest  stages  of  human  development, 
as  exhibited  by  the  savages,  certainly  constrains  the  admission 
that  the  conscious  or  designed  co-operation  of  the  mind  in  the 
adaptation  of  man  to  external  nature  was  not  great.  The  fact 
is,  however,  in  exact  conformity  with  what  has  already  been 
asserted  with  regard  to  the  nature  and  domain  of  consciousness ; 
assuredly  it  is  not  consciousness,  the  natural  result  of  a  due 
development,  which  gives  the  impulse  to  development;  this 
coming  from  a  source  that  is  past  finding  out — from  the  primeval 
central  Power  which  hurled  the  planets  on  their  courses,  and 
holds  the  lasting  orbs  of  heaven  in  their  just  poise  and  move- 
ment. In  virtue  of  the  fundamental  impulse  of  its  being 

who  have  treated  the  sciences  were  either  empirics  or  rationalists.  The  empirics, 
like  auts,  only  lay  up  stores  and  use  them  ;  the  rationalists,  like  spiders,  spin 
Avebs  out  of  themselves ;  but  the  bee  takes  a  middle  course,  gathering  her 
matter  from  the  flowers  of  the  field  and  garden,  and  digesting  and  preparing  it 
by  her  native  powers.  In  like  manner,  that  is  the  true  office  and  work  of  phi- 
losophy which,  not  trusting  too  much  to  the  faculties  of  the  mind,  does  not  lay 
up  the  matter,  afforded  by  natural  history  and  mechanical  experience,  entire  or 
unfashioned  in  the  memory,  but  treasures  it  after  being  first  elaborated  and 
digested  in  the  understanding.  And,  therefore,  we  have  a  good  ground  of  hope, 
from  the  close  and  strict  union  of  the  experimental  and  rational  faculty,  which 
have  not  hitherto  been  united."  In  the  very  place  where  the  obscure  passage 
occurs,  he  says,  after  speaking  of  the  inauspicious  divorce  usually  made  between 
mind  and  nature  — "  The  explanation  of  which  things,  and  of  the  true  relation 
between  the  nature  of  things  and  the  nature  of  the  mind,  is  as  the  strewing  and 
decoration  of  the  bridal  chamber  of  the  Mind  and  Universe,  the  Divine  Goodness 
assisting  ;  out  of  which  marriage  let  us  hope  (and  this  be  the  prayer  of  the  bridal 
song)  there  may  spring  helps  to  man,  and  a  line  and  race  of  inventions  that 
may  in  some  degree  subdue  and  overcome  the  necessities  and  miseries  of 
humanity." 


i.]  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  31 

mankind  struggles,  at  first  blindly,  towards  a  knowledge  of  and 
adaptation  to  external  nature,  until  that  which  has  been  insen- 
sibly acquired  through  generations  becomes  an  inborn  addition 
to  the  power  of  the  mind,  and  that  which  was  unconsciously 
done  becomes  conscious  method. 

It  were  well,  then,  that  this  idea  took  deep  and  firm  root 
in  our  thoughts:  that  the  development   of  mind,  both  in  the 
individual  and  through  generations,  is  a  gradual  process  of  orga- 
nization— a  process  in  which  nature  is  undergoing  her  latest 
and  most  consummate  development.     In  reality  we  do  not  fail 
virtually  to  recognise  this  in  the  case  of  language,  whose  organic 
growth,  as  we  scientifically  trace  it,  is  the  result  of  the  unseen 
organization  of  thought  that  lies  beneath,  and  alone  gives  it 
meaning.     His  own  consciousness,  faithfully  interpreted,  might 
suffice  to  reveal  to  each  one  the  gradual  maturing,  or  becoming, 
through  which  a  process  of  thought   continually  goes  in  his 
mind.     So  has  it  been  with  mankind:  at  first  there  was  an 
instinctive  or  pure  organic  development,  the  human  race  strug- 
gling on,  as.  the  child  does,  without  being  conscious  of  its  ego  ; 
then,  as  it  got  to  a  certain  stage  of  development,  it  becomes,  as 
the  youth  does,  exceedingly  self-conscious,  and  an  extravagant 
and  unhealthy  metaphysical  subjectivity  was  the  expression  of 
an  undue  self-feeling;  and  finally,  as  the  happily  developing 
individual  passes  from  an  undue  subjectivity  to  a  calm  objective 
method  of  viewing  things,  so  Bacon  may  be  said  to  mark  the 
epoch  of  a  corresponding  happy  change  in  the  development  of 
mankind.     Let  us  entirely  get  rid,  however,  of  the  notion  that 
the  objective  study  of  nature  means  merely  the  sensory  per- 
ception of  it ;  we  see,  not  with  the  eye,  but  through  it ;  and  to 
any  one  who  is  above  the  level  of  the  animal  the  sun  is  not  a 
bright  disc  of  fire  about  the  size  of  a  cheese,  but  an  immense  orb 
moving  through  space  with  its  attendant  planetary  system  at 
the   rate   of  some  400,000   miles  a  day.*     Now,   such  is   the 
wondrous    harmony,  connexion,  and  continuity  pervading  that 
mysterious  whole  which  we  call  nature,  that  it  is  impossible  to 

*  "  We  are  deluded  and  led  by  the  fallacies  of  the  senses,  for  instance,  to 
believe  that  it  is  the  eye  that  sees,  and  the  ear  that  hears  ;  although  the  eye  and 
the  ear  are  only  the  organs  or  instruments  through  which  the  soul  perceives  the 
modes  of  the  ultimate  world." — Swedenborg,  Animal  Kingdom,  ii.  336. 


32  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP. 

get  a  just  and  clear  idea  of  one  pure  circle  of  her  works  without 
that  idea  becoming  most  useful  in  flashing  a  light  into  obscure 
and  unknown  regions,  and  in  thus  aiding  the  conscious  estab- 
lishment of  a  further  harmony  of  adaptation  between  man  and 
nature.*  The  brilliant  insight  or  intuition  of  the  man  of  genius, 
who  so  often  anticipates  the  slow  result  of  systematic  investi- 
gation, witnesses  with  singular  force  to  that  truth.  Far  wiser 
than  many  of  his  commentators  have  been,  Bacon  accordingly 
failed  not  clearly  to  appreciate  the  exceeding  value  of  idea  in  the 
interpretation  of  nature. 

But  if  the  due  co-operation  of  the  mind  is  necessary,  if  the 
harmony  of  subjective  and  objective  was  Bacon's  real  method,  in 
the  prosecution  of  physical  science,  how  much  more  useful  must 
the  just  union  of  the  empirical  and  rational  faculty  be  in  the 
study  of  mental  science  ;  the  task  then  being  to  apply  the  ideas 
of  the  mind  to  the  interpretation  of  the  mind's  processes  of 
activity.  It  must  assuredly  be  allowed  that  the  light  of  one's 
own  train  of  thought  is  often  most  serviceable  in  interpreting  the 
mind  of  another  ;  so  much  so,  indeed,  that  one  may  know  what 
is  passing  therein  with  not  less  certainty,  sometimes  even  with 
greater  certainty,  than  when  it  is  actually  uttered.  In  order  to 
be  successful  in  this  sort  of  intuition,  however,  not  only  good 
natural  insight,  but  a  large  experience  of  life  and  men,  is  most 
necessary,  else  the  most  grievous  mistakes  may  be  made ;  here, 
as  elsewhere,  power  is  acquired  by  intending  the  mind  to  ex- 
ternal realities,  by  submitting  the  understanding  to  things. 
Plainly,  too,  this  objective  application  of  our  ideas  is  a  very 
different  matter  from  the  deliberate  direction  of  consciousness  to 
its  own  states,  that  introspective  analysis  of  the  processes  of 
thought  whereby,  as  before  said,  the  natural  train  of  ideas  being 
interrupted  and  the  tension  of  a  particular  activity  maintained, 
an  artificial  state  of  mind  is  produced,  and  a  tortured  self- 
consciousness,  like  an  individual  put  to  the  torture,  makes 
confessions  that  are  utterly  unreliable.  The  genuine  utterances 
of  his  inner  life,  or  the  sincere  and  direct  revelations  of  the  man 
of  great  natural  ability  and  good  training,  are  the  highest  truths 
— what  Plato  has  written  is  of  eternal  interest ;  but  the  con- 

*  Deiin  wo  STatur  im  reinen  Kreise  wallet  ergreifen  alle  "Welten  sich. — Goethe, 
Faust. 


I.]  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  33 

tradictory  anatomical  revelations  of  internal  analysis  by  the 
professed  psychologists  are  the  vainest  word  jugglings  with 
which  a  tenacious  perseverance  has  vexed  a  long-suffering 
world.  They  should  justly  be  opposed,  as  by  Bacon  ;  or  shunned, 
as  by  Shakespeare  ;  or  abhorred,  as  by  Goethe : — "  Ich  habe  nie 
an  Denken  gedacht."  As  in  the  child  there  is  no  consciousness 
of  the  ego,  so  in  the  highest  development  of  humanity,  as  repre- 
sented by  these  our  greatest,  there  seems  to  have  been  reached  a 
similar  unconsciousness  of  the  ego  ;  and  the  individual,  in  inti- 
mate and  congenial  sympathy  with  nature,  carries  forward  its 
organic  evolution  with  a  childlike  unconsciousness  and  a  child- 
like success. 

Before  concluding  this  chapter  it  may  be  well  distinctly  to 
affirm  a  truth  which  is  an  unwelcome  one,  because  it  natters  not 
the  self-love  of  mankind ;  and  it  is  this,  that  there  is  all  the 
difference  in  the  world  between  the  gifted  man  of  genius,  who 
can  often  anticipate  the  slow  results  of  systematic  investigation, 
and  who  strikes  out  new  paths,  and  the  common  herd  of  mortals, 
who  must  plod  on  with  patient  humility  in  the  old  tracks,  "  with 
manifold  motions  making  little  speed:"  it  is  the  difference 
between  the  butterfly  which  flies  and  feeds  on  honey  and  the 
caterpillar  which  crawls  and  gorges  on  leaves.  Men,  ever  eager 
to  "  pare  the  mountain  to  the  plain,"  will  not  willingly  confess 
this ;  nevertheless  it  is  most  true.  Eules  and  systems  are 
necessary  for  the  ordinarily  endowed  mortals,  whose  business  it 
is  to  gather  together  and  arrange  the  materials  ;  the  genius,  who 
is  the  architect,  has,  like  nature,  an  unconscious  system  of  his 
own.  It  is  the  fate  of  its  nature,  and  no  demerit,  that  the  cater- 
pillar must  crawl :  it  is  the  fate  of  its  nature,  and  no  merit,  that 
the  butterfly  must  fly.  The  question,  so  much  disputed,  of  the 
relative  extent  of  applicability  of  the  so-called  inductive  and 
deductive  methods,  often  resolves  itself  into  a  question  as  to 
what  manner  of  man  it  is  who  is  to  use  them — whether  one  who 
has  senses  only,  who  has  eyes  and  sees  not,  or  one  who  has  senses 
and  a  soul ;  whether  one  who  can  only  collect  so-called  facts  of 
observation,  or  one  who  can  bind  together  the  thousand  scattered 
facts  by  the  organizing  idea,  and  thus  guarantee  them  to  be  facts. 
AVhat  an  offence  to  the  chartered  imbecility  of  industrious 
mediocrity  that  Plato,  Shakespeare,  Goethe,  Humboldt,  Bacon  too, 
4 


34  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP. 

and,  in  truth,  every  man  who  had  anything  of  inspiration  in 
him,  were  not  mere  sense-machines  for  registering  observations, 
but  rather  instruments  on  which  the  melody  of  nature,  like 
sphere  music,  was  made  for  the  benefit  and  delectation  of  such 
as  have  ears  to  hear !  That  some  so  virulently  declaim  against 
theory  is  as  though  the  eunuch  should  declaim  against  lechery : 
it  is  the  chastity  of  impotence. 

So  rarely,  however,  does  nature  produce  one  of  these  men 
gifted  with  that  high  and  subtle  quality  called  genius — being 
scarce,  indeed,  equal  to  the  production  of  one  in  a  century — and 
so  self-sufficing  are  they  when  they  do  appear,  that  we,  gratefully 
accepting  them  as  visits  of  angels,  or  much  as  Plato  accepted 
his  super-celestial  ideas,  need  not  vainly  concern  ourselves  about 
their  manner  of  working.  It  is  not  by  such  anxious  troubling 
that  one  will  come  ;  it  is  not  by  introspective  prying  into  and 
torture  of  its  own  self-consciousness  that  mankind  evolves  the 
genius  ;  the  mature  result  of  its  unconscious  development  flows 
at  due  time  into  consciousness  with  a  grateful  surprise,  and  from 
time  to  time  the  slumbering  centuries  are  thus  awakened.  It  is 
by  the  patient  and  diligent  work  at  systematic  adaptation  to  the 
external  by  the  rank  and  file  of  mankind  ;  it  is  by  the  conscien- 
tious labour  of  each  one,  after  the  inductive  method,  in  that  little 
sphere  of  nature,  whether  psychical  or  physical,  which  in  the 
necessary  division  of  labour  has  fallen  to  his  lot — that  a  con- 
dition of  evolution  is  reached  at  which  the  genius  starts  forth. 
Tiresome,  then,  as  the  minute  man  of  observation  may  sometimes 
seem  as  he  exults  over  his  scattered  facts  as  if  they  were  final, 
and  magnifies  his  molecules  into  mountains  as  if  they  were 
eternal,  it  is  well  that  he  should  thus  enthusiastically  esteem  his 
work ;  and  no  one  but  will  give  a  patient  attention  as  he  reflects 
how  indispensable  the  humblest  unit  is  in  the  social  organism, 
and  how  excellent  a  spur  vanity  is  to  industry.  Xot  unamusing, 
though  somewhat  saddening,  is  it,  however,  to  witness  the  painful 
surprise  of  the  man  of  observation,  his  jealous  indignation  and 
clamorous  outcry,  when  the  result  at  which  he  and  his  fellow- 
labourers  have  been  so  patiently,  though  blindly,  working — 
when  the  genius-product  of  the  century  which  he  has  helped  to 
create,  starts  into  life — when  the  metamorphosis  is  completed : 
amusing,  because  the  patient  worker  is  supremely  astonished  at 


i.J  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  35 

a  result  which,  though  preparing,  he  nowise  foresaw  ;  saddening, 
because  individually  he  is  annihilated,  and  all  the  toil  in  which 
he  spent  his  strength  is  swallowed  up  in  the  product  which, 
gathering  up  the  different  lines  of  investigation  and  thought,  and 
giving  to  them  a  unity  of  development,  now  by  epigenesis  ensues. 
"We  perceive,  then,  how  it  is  that  a  great  genius  cannot  come  save 
at  long  intervals,  as  the  tree  cannot  blossom  but  at  its  due  season. 

But  why  should  any  one,  great  or  little,  fret  and  fume  because 
he  is  likely  soon  to  be  forgotten  ?  The  genius  himself,  as  indi- 
vidual, is  after  all  of  but  little  account ;  it  is  only  as  the  birth  of 
the  travailing  centuries  that  he  exists,  only  so  far  as  he  is  a  true 
birth  of  them  and  adequately  representative,  that  he  is  of  value  : 
the  more  individual  he  is  the  more  transitory  will  be  his  fame. 
When  he  is  immortal  he  has  become  a  mere  name  marking  an 
epoch,  and  no  longer  an  individual.  Whosoever,  in  a  foolish 
conceit  of  originality,  strains  after  novelty  and  neglects  the 
scattered  and  perhaps  obscure  labours  of  others  who  have  pre- 
ceded him,  or  who  are  contemporaneous  with  him  ;  whosoever, 
over-careful  of  his  individual  fame,  cannot  carry  forward  his 
own  evolution  with  a  serene  indifference  to  neglect  or  censure, 
but  makes  puerile  demands  on  the  approbation  of  the  world — 
may  rest  content  that  he  is  not  a  complete  birth  of  the  age,  but 
more  or  less  an  abortive  monstrosity :  the  more  extreme  he  is  as 
a  monstrosity  the  more  original  must  he  needs  be. 

Viewing  mental  development,  whether  in  the  individual  or  in 
the  race,  as  a  process  of  organization,  as  the  consummate  display 
of  nature's  organic  evolution,  and  recognising,  as  we  must  do,' 
the  most  favourable  conditions  of  such  evolution  to  be  the  most 
intimate  harmony  between  man  and  nature,  we  may  rightly 
conclude,  as  far  as  concerns  the  rule  of  a  conscious  method  of 
inquiry,  with  the  ancient  and  well-grounded  maxim — "  Learn  to 
know  thyself  in  nature,  that  BO  thou  mayest  know  nature  in 
thyself."  (6) 

NOTES. 

i  (-p.  4). — « Insomuch  that  many  times  not  only  what  was  asserted 
once  is  asserted  still,  but  what  was  a  question  once  is  a  question  still, 
and  instead  of  being  resolved  by  discussion,  is  only  fixed  and  fed." — 
Bacon,  Proleg.  Inst.  Magn. 


36  ON  THE  METHOD  OF  [CHAP. 

2  (p.  10). — The  received  psychology  M.  Comte  calls  an  "  illusory 
psychology,  which  is  the  last  phase  of  theology,"  and  says  that  it 
"  pretends  to  accomplish  the  discovery  of  the  laws  of  the  human  mind 
by  contemplating  it  in  itself ;  that  is,  by  separating  it  from  causes  and 
eflects." — Miss  Martineau's  Translation,  p.  11.     Again,  he  says,  "  In 
order  to  observe,  your  intellect  must  pause  from  activity  ;  yet  it  is  this 
very  activity  that  you  want  to  observe.     If  you  cannot  effect   the 
pause,  you  cannot  observe ;    if  you  do  effect  it,  there  is  nothing  to 
observe.     The  results  of  such  a  method  are   in  proportion    to   its 
absurdity." — Ibid.  p.  11. 

3  (p.   12). — "But  the  truth' is,  that  they  are  not  the  highest  in- 
stances which  give  the  best  or  securest  information,  as  is  expressed, 
not  inelegantly,  in  the  common  story  of  the  philosopher,  who,  while 
he  gazed  upon  the  stars,  fell  into  the  water ;  for  if  he  had  looked 
down  he  might  have  seen  the  stars  in  the  water,  but,  looking  aloft,  he 
could  not  see  the  water  in  the  stars." — De  Augment.  Scient.  B.  ii. 

4  (p.  14). — Individual  Psychology  Bacon  set  down  as  wanting;  he 
enforces  its  study,  "  so  that  we  mjvy  have  a  scientific  and  accurate  dis- 
section of  mind  and  characters,  and  the  secret  dispositions  of  parti- 
cular men  may  be  revealed,  and  that  from  the  knowledge  thereof, 
better   rules   may  be  framed  for  the  treatment  of  the  mind." — De 
Augment.  Scient.  B.  vii 

*  5  (p.  22). — "  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  he  (Dugald  Stewart)  had  not 
studied  (he  even  treats  it  as  inconceivable)  the  Leibnitzian  doctrine  of 
what  has  not  been  well  denominated  obscure  perceptions  or  ideas — that  is, 
acts  and  affections  of  mind,  which,  manifesting  their  existence  in  their 
effects,  are  themselves  out  of  consciousness  or  apperception.  The  fact 
of  such  latent  modifications  is  now  established  beyond  all  rational 
doubt ;  and  on  the  supposition  of  their  reality,  we  are  able  to  solve 
various  psychological  phenomena  otherwise  inexplicable.  Among 
these  are  many  of  those  attributed  to  habit." — Sir  W.  Hamilton,  in 
his  edition  of  Reid,  p.  551. 

"  Ich  sehe  nicht,"  says  Leibnitz,  "  dass  die  Cartesianer  jemals 
beweisen  haben  oder  beweisen  kb'nnen,  dass  jede  Yorstellung  von 
Bewusstsein  begleitet  ist."  And  again  : — "  Darin  namlich  haben  die 
Cartesianer  sehr  gefehlt,  dass  sie  die  Vorstellungen,  deren  man  sich 
nicht  bewusst  ist,  fur  nichts  rechneten.  Das  war  auch  der  Grund, 
warum  sie  glaubten,  dass  nur  die  Geiste  Monaden  waren,  und  dass 
es  keine  Seel  en  der  Thiere  oder  andere  Entelechien  gebe." — Leibnitz 
als  Denker.  Auswahl  seiner  kleinern  Aufsatze.  G.  Schelling.  P. 
108  and  p.  115. 

Fichte,  in  his  Bestimmung  des  Menschen — "  In  jedem  Momente  ihrer 


L]  THE  STUDY  OF  MIND.  37 

Dauer  ist  die  Natur  ein  zusammenhangendes  Ganze ;  in  jedem  Moraente 
muss  jeder  einzelne  Theil  derselbe  so  sein  wie  er  ist,  weil  alle  ubrigen 
sind  wie  sie  sind ;  und  du  kb'nntest  kein  Sandkbrnchen  von  seiner 
Stelle  verrucken,  ohne  dadurch  vielleich-t  alle  Theile  des  unermesslichen 
Ganzen  hindurch  etwas  zu  verandern.  Aber  jeder  Moment  dieser 
Dauer  ist  bestimmt  durch  alle  abgelaufenen  Momente,  und  wird 
bestimmen  alle  kiinftigen  Momente,  und  du  kannst  in  dem  gegen- 
wartigen  keines  Sandkb'rne  Lage  anders  denken  als  sie  ist,  ohne  dass 
du  genbthigt  wiirdest  die  ganze  Vergangenheit  ins  Unbestimmte 
liinauf,  und  die  ganze  Zukunft  ins  Unbestimmte  herab  dir  anders  zu 
denken." — Sammtliche  Werke,  ii.  178. 

It  is  only  right  to  add,  that  the  fullest  exposition  of  unconscious 
mental  action  is  to  be  found  in  Beneke's  works.  A  summary  of  his 
views  is  contained  in  his  Lehrbuch  der  Psychologie  als  Naturwissenchaft. 

6  (p.  35). — Since  this  chapter  was  written,  and,  indeed,  separately 
published,  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill  has  made  a  powerful  defence  of  the  so-called 
Psychological  Method.  In  his  criticism  of  Comte  in  the  Westminster 
Review  for  April  1865,  and  in  his  "Examination  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
Philosophy,"  he  has  said  all  that  can  be  said  in  favour  of  the  Psycho- 
logical Method,  and  has  done  what  could  be  done  to  disparage  the 
Physiological  Method.  This  he  had  already  done  many  years  ago  in 
the  second  volume  of  his  "  System  of  Logic,"  and  he  is  now  only 
consistent  in  returning  to  the  charge.  Nevertheless,  the  admirers  01 
Mr.  Mill  cannot  but  experience  regret  to  see  him  serving  with  so  much 
zeal  on  what  seems  so  desperately  forlorn  a  hope.  Physiology  seems 
never  to  have  been  a  favourite  study  with  Mr.  Mill,  for  it  is  hardly 
possible  to  conceive  any  one  really  acquainted  with  the  present  state  of 
this  science,  disparaging  it  as  he  has  done,  and  exalting  so  highly  the 
psychological  method  of  investigating  mental  phenomena.  The  wonder 
is,  however,  that  he  who  has  done  so  much  to  expound  the  system  of 
Comte,  and  to  strengthen  and  complete  it,  should  on  this  question  take 
leave  of  it  entirely,  and  follow  and  laud  a  method  of  research  which 
is  so  directly  opposed  to  the  method  of  positive  science.  However, 
though  one  may  suspect  Mr.  Mill  to  be  entirely  mistaken  in  his 
estimate  of  the  physiological  method,  one  cannot  fail  to  profit  by  the 
study  of  his  arguments  on  behalf  of  tho  psychological  method,  and  by 
his  lucid  exposition  of  its  merits.  For  the  reasons  why  he  has  not 
been  convincing,  and  why  this  chapter  has  been  left  unmodified,  I 
may  refer  to  the  arguments  set  forth  in  a  review  of  his  "  Examination 
of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  Philosophy  "  in  the  Journal  of  Mental  Science 
for  January  1866. 


CHAPTEE  H. 

THE  MIND  AND  THE  NERVOUS  SYSTEM. 

"  That  which  perceives  is  a  part  of  nature  as  truly  as  the  objects  of  perception 
which  act  on  it,  and,  as  a  part  of  nature,  is  itself  an  object  of  investigation  purely 
physical.  It  is  known  to  us  only  in  the  successive  changes  which  constitute  the 
variety  of  our  feelings  :  but  the  regular  sequence  of  these  changes  admits  of  being 
traced,  like  the  regularity  which  we  are  capable  of  discovering  in  the  successive 
changes  of  our  bodily  frame.  There  is  a  Physiology  of  tJie  Mind,  then,  as  there 
is  a  Physiology  of  the  Body — a  science  which  examines  the  phenomena  of  our 
spiritual  part  simply  as  phenomena,  and,  from  the  order  of  their  succession,  or 
other  circumstances  of  analogy,  arranges  them  in  classes,  under  certain  general 
names  ;  as,  in  the  physiology  of  our  corporeal  part,  we  consider  the  phenomena 
of  a  different  kind  which  the  body  exhibits,  and  reduce  all  the  diversities  of 
these  under  the  names  of  a  few  general  functions." — Sketch  of  a  System,  of 
Philosophy  of  the  Human  Mind,  by  T.  Brown,  M.  D. 

THE  crude  proposition  of  Cabanis,*  that  the  brain  secretes 
thought  as  the  liver  secretes  bile,  has  been  a  subject  of  much 
ridicule  to  those  "who  have  not  received  it  with  outcries  of  dis- 
approbation and  disgust.  Assuredly  it  is  not  a  just  expression  of 
the  facts  ;  one  may  rightly  admit  the  brain  to  be  the  principal 
organ  of  the  mind,  without  accepting  the  fallacious  comparison 
of  mental  action  with  biliary  secretion.  Here  as  elsewhere,  con- 
fusion is  bred  by  the  common  use  of  the  word  "  secretion  "  to 
express  not  only  the  functional  process  but  the  secreted  product, 
both  the  insensible  vital  changes  and  the  tangible  results  of 
them.  It  is  of  great  importance  to  try  to  fix,  with  as  much 
exactness  as  possible,  what  we  mean  by  mind. 

In  the  first  place,  mind,  viewed  in  its  scientific  sense  as  a 
natural  force,  cannot  be  observed  and  handled  and  dealt  with 
as  a  palpable  object;  like  electricity,  or  gravity,  or  any  other 

*  "  Nous  concluons  avec  la  memo  certitude  que  le  cerveau  digere  en  quclque 
sort  les  impressions  ;  qu'il  fait  orgauiquemeut  la  secretion  de  la  pensee." — Rapport 
du  Physique  et  du  Moral  de  I'Homme,  par  P.  J.  G.  Cabania. 


CHAP.  ii.J  THE  MIND  AND  THE  NER70US  SYSTEM.  39 

of  the  natural  forces,  it  is  appreciable  only  in  the  changes  of 
matter  which  are  the  conditions  of  its  manifestation.  Few  will 
now  be  found  to  deny  that  with  each  display  of  mental  power 
there  are  correlative  changes  in  the  material  substratum ;  that 
every  phenomenon  of  mind  is  the  result,  as  manifest  energy, 
of  some  change,  molecular,  chemical,  or  vital,  in  the  nervous 
elements  of  the  brain.  Chemical  analysis  of  the  so-called  extrac- 
tives of  nerve  testifies  to  definite  change  or  "waste"  through 
functional  activity ;  for  there  are  found,  as  products  of  a  retro- 
grade metamorphosis,  lactic  acid,  kreatin,  uric  acid,  probably  also 
hypoxanthin,  and,  representing  the  fatty  acids,  formic  and  acetic 
acids.  These  products  are  very  like  those  which  are  found  in 
muscle  after  its  functional  activity :  in  the  performance  of  an 
idea,  as  in  the  performance  of  a  movement,  there  is  a  retrograde 
metamorphosis  of  organic  element ;  the  display  of  energy  is  at 
the  cost  of  the  highly-organized  matter,  which  undergoes  degene- 
ration or  passes  from  a  higher  to  a  lower  grade  of  being ;  and 
the  retrograde  products  are,  so  far  as  is  at  present  known,  very 
nearly  the  same.  While  the  contents  of  nerves,  again,  are  neutral 
during  rest  in  the  living  state,  they  become  acid  after  death,  and 
after  great  activity  during  life :  the  same  is  the  case  also  with 
regard  to  muscle.  Furthermore,  the  products  of  the  metamor- 
phosis of  nerve  element  after  prolonged  mental  exercise  are 
recognised  in  an  increase  of  phosphates  in  the  urine ;  while  it 
is  only  by  supposing  an  idea  to  be  accompanied  by  a  correlative 
change  in  the  nerve-cells  that  we  can  explain  the  exhaustion 
following  excessive  mental  work  and  the  breaking  down  of  the 
brain  in  extreme  cases.  These,  things  being  so,  what  is  it  which 
in  a  physiological  sense  we  designate  the  mind  ?  Not  the  mate- 
rial products  of  cerebral  activity,  but  the  marvellous  energy 
which  cannot  be  grasped  and  handled.  Here,  then,  is  made 
manifest  a  fallacy  of  the  axiom  propounded  by  Cabanis :  it  is 
plain  that  the  tangible  results  of  the  brain's  activity,  the  waste 
matters  which  pass  into  the  blood  for  ultimate  excretion  from 
the  body,  might  not  less  rightly  be  called  the  secretion  of  the 
brain,  and  be  compared  to  the  bile,  than  the  intangible  energy 
revealed  in  the  mental  phenomena. 

Secondly,  it  is  most  needful,  in  order  to  avoid  confusion,  to 
settle  what  is  commonly  understood  by  mind,  as  vaguely  used. 


40  THE  MIND  [CHAP. 

It  is  really  a  general  term  acquired  by  observation  of  and 
abstraction  from  the  manifold  variety  of  mental  phenomena: 
by  such  observation  of  the  particular  phenomena  and  appro- 
priate abstraction  from  them  we  get,  as  an  ultimate  genera- 
lization, the  general  conception,  or  the,  so  to  speak,  essential 
idea,  of  mind.  An  illustration  will  help  to  exhibit  what  we 
mean.  The  steam-engine  is  a  complicated  mechanism,  of  the 
construction  and  mode  of  action  of  which  many  people  know 
very  little,  but  it  has  a  very  definite  function  of  which  those 
who  know  nothing  of  its  construction  can  still  form  a  suffi- 
ciently distinct  conception ;  the  co-ordinate,  integral  action  of 
the  steam-engine,  as  we  conceive  it,  is  different  from  the  nicely- 
adjusted  mechanism  or  from  the  action  of  any  part  of  it.  But 
the  function  of  the  engine  is  dependent  on  the  mechanism  and 
on  the  co-ordinate  action  of  its  parts,  cannot  be  dissociated  from 
these,  and  has  no  real  existence  apart  from  them,  though  it  may 
exist  separately  as  a  conception  in  our  minds.  By  observation 
of  the  mechanism  and  appropriate  abstraction  we  get  the  essential 
idea  of  the  steam-engine,  a  fundamental  idea  of  it  which,  as  our 
ultimate  generalization,  expresses  its  very  nature  as  such,,  con- 
tains, as  Coleridge  would  have  said,  "  the  inmost  principles  of 
its  possibility  as  a  steam-engine."  So  likewise  with  regard  to 
the  manifold  mental  phenomena;  by  observation  of  them  and 
abstraction  from  the  particular  we  get  the  general  conception  or 
the  essential  idea  of  mind,  an  idea  which  has  no  more  existence 
out  of  the  mind  than  any  other  abstract  idea  or  general  term. 
In  virtue,  however,  of  that  powerful  tendency  in  the  human 
mind  to  make  the  reality  conformable  to  the  idea,  a  tendency 
which  has  been  at  the  bottom  of  so  much  confusion  in  philo- 
sophy, this  general  conception  has  been  converted  into  an  objec- 
tive entity,  and  allowed  to  tyrannize  over  the  understanding. 
A  metaphysical  abstraction  has  been  made  into  a  spiritual  entity, 
and  a  complete  barrier  thereby  interposed  in  the  way  of  positive 
investigation.  Whatever  be  the  real  nature  of  the  mind — and  of 
that  there  is  no  need  to  speak  here — it  is  most  certainly  depen- 
dent for  its  every  manifestation  on  the  brain  and  nervous  system ; 
and  now  that  scientific  research  is  daily  disclosing  more  clearly 
the  relations  between  it  and  its  organ,  it  is  plainly  most  desirable 
to  guard  against  the  common  metaphysical  conception  of  mind, 


II.]  AND  THE  NERFOUS  SYSTEM.  41 

by  recognising  the  true  subjective  character  of  the  conception* 
and  the  mode  of  its  origin  and  growth. 

A  third  important  consideration  is,  that  mental  power  is  truly 
an  organized  result,  not  strictly  speaking  built  up,  but  matured 
by  insensible  degrees  in  the  course  of  life.  The  brain  is  not,  like 
the  liver,  the  heart,  or  other  internal  organ,  capable  from  the  time 
of  birth  of  all  the  functions  to  which  it  ever  ministers  ;  for  while, 
in  common  with  them,  it  has  a  certain  organic  function  to  which 
it  is  born  equal,  its  high  special  functions  in  man  as  the  organ 
of  animal  life,  the  supreme  instrument  of  his  relations  with  the 
rest  of  nature,  are  developed  only  by  a  long  and  patient  educa- 
tion. Though  the  brain,  then,  is  formed  during  embryonic  life, 
its  highest  development  only  takes  place  after  birth ;  and,  as 
will  hereafter  appear,  the  same  gradual  progress  from  the  general 
to  the  special  which  is  exhibited  in  the  development  of  the 
organ  is  witnessed  in  the  development  of  our  intelligence.  How 
inexact  and  misleading,  in  this  regard,  therefore,  is  any  com- 
parison between  it  and  the  liver  ! 

Nevertheless,  it  must  be  distinctly  laid  down,  that  mental 
action  is  as  surely  dependent  on  the  nervous  structure  as  the 
function  of  the  liver  confessedly  is  on  the  hepatic  structure : 
that  is  the  fundamental  principle  upon  which  the  fabric  of  a 
mental  science  must  rest.  The  countless  thousands  of  nerve 
cells,  which  form  so  great  a  part  of  the  delicate  structure  of  the 
brain,  are  deemed  to  be  the  centres  of  its  functional  activity :  we 
know  right  well  from  experiment,  that  the  ganglionic  nerve  cells 
scattered  through  the  tissues  of  organs,  as,  for  example,  through 
the  walls  of  the  intestines,  or  the  structure  of  the  heart,  are  centres 
of  nerve  force  ministering  to  their  organic  action ;  and  we  may 
fairly  infer  that  the  ganglionic  cells  of  the  brain,  which  are  not 
similarly  amenable  to  observation  and  experiment,  have  a  like 
function.  Certainly  they  are  not  inexhaustible  centres  of  self- 
generating  force ;  they  give  out  no  more  than  what  they  have 
in  one  way  or  another  taken  in ;  they  receive  material  from  the 
blood,  which  they  assimilate,  or  make  of  the  same  kind  with 
themselves  ;  a  correlative  metamorphosis  of  force  necessarily 
accompanying  this  upward  transformation  of  matter,  and  the 
nerve  cell  thus  becoming,  so  long  as  its  equilibrium  is  preserved, 
a  centre  of  statical  power  of  the  highest  vital  quality.  The 


42  THE  MIND  [CHAP. 

maintenance  of  the  equilibrium  of  nervous  element  is  the  con- 
dition of  latent  thought — it  is  mind  statical ;  the  manifestation 
of  thought  implies  the  change  or  destruction  of  nervous  element. 
The  nerve  cell  of  the  brain,  it  might  in  fact  be  said,  represents 
statical  thought,  while  thought  represents  dynamical  nerve  cell, 
or,  more  properly,  the  energy  of  nerve  cell. 

So  far  from  discussing  whether  the  mind  is  the  function  of 
the  brain,  the  business  of  science  now  is  the  more  special  in- 
vestigation of  the  conditions  of  activity  of  the  ganglionic  nerve 
cell  or  groups  of  nerve  cells.  If  we  look  to  those  humbler 
animals  in  which  nervous  tissue  makes  its  first  appearance,  it  is 
plain  that  the  simple  mode  of  its  existence  in  them  allows  of 
no  other  manner  of  proceeding ;  if  we  trace  upwards  the  gradual 
increasing  complication  of  the  nervous  system  through  the 
animal  kingdom,  it  is  evident  that  such  manner  of  proceeding 
is  the  only  one  to  furnish  the  materials  of  a  comprehensive  and 
safe  induction ;  and  if  we  duly  weigh  the  results  of  physiological 
experiment  and  pathological  research,  it  is  no  less  certain  that 
we  must  discard  scientific  investigation  altogether  in  cerebral 
physiology  if  we  reject  the  ganglionic  nerve  cell  of  the  brain  as 
a  centre  of  mental  force. 

In  the  lowest  forms  of  animal  life  nerve  does  not  exist.  The 
stimulus  which  the  little  creature  receives  from  without  would 
seem  to  produce  some  change  in  the  molecular  relations  of  its 
almost  homogeneous  substance,  and  these  insensible  movements 
collectively  to  amount  to  the  sensible  movement  which  it  makes  ; 
the  molecular  process  in  such  case  being  perhaps  not  unlike 
that  which  ensues,  and  issues  in  the  coagulation  of  the  blood, 
when  the  fibrine  is  brought  in  contact,  as  some  think,  with  a 
foreign  substance.  The  perception  of  the  stimulus  by  the 
creature  is  the  molecular  change  which  ensues,  the  imperceptible 
motion  passing,  by  reason  of  the  homogeneity  of  its  substance, 
with  the  greatest  ease  from  element  to  element  of  the  same 
kind,  as  it  were  by  an  infection,  or  as  happens  in  the  sensitive 
plant;  and  the  sum  of  the  molecular  motions,  as  necessarily 
determined  in  direction  by  the  form  of  the  animal,  results  in 
the  visible  movement.  The  recent  researches  of  Graham  into 
the  colloidal  condition  of  matter  have  proved  the  necessity  of 
some  modifications  in  our  usual  conceptions  of  solid  matter: 


ii.]  AND  THE  NERrOUS  SYSTEM.  43 

instead  of  the  notion  of  impenetrable,  inert  matter,  we  must 
substitute  the  idea  of  matter  which,  in  its  colloidal  state,  is 
penetrable,  exhibits  energy,  and  is  widely  susceptible  to  external 
agents,  "  its  existence  being  a  continued  metastasis."*  This  sort 
of  energy  is  not  a  result  of  chemical  action,  for  colloids  are 
singularly  inert  in  all  ordinary  chemical  relations,  but  a  result 
of  its  unknown  intimate  molecular  constitution;  and  the  un- 
doubted existence  of  colloidal  energy  in  inorganic  substances, 
which  are  usually  considered  inert  and  called  dead,  may  well 
warrant  the  belief  of  its  larger  and  more  essential  operation  in 
organic  matter  in  the  state  of  instability  of  composition  in  which 
it  is  when  under  the  condition  of  life.  Such  energy  would 
then  suffice  to  account  for  the  simple  uniform  movements  of  the 
homogeneous  substance  of  which  the  lowest  animal  consists ; 
and  the  absence  of  any  differentiation  of  structure  is  a  sufficient 
reason  of  "the  general  uniform  reaction  to  different  impressions. 

"With  the  differentiation  of  tissue  and  increasing  complexity 
of  organization,  which  are  met  with  as  we  ascend  in  the  animal 
kingdom,  the  nervous  tissue  appears,  but  at  first  under  a  very 
simple  form.  Its  simplest  type  may  be  represented  as  two  fibres 
that  are  connected  by  a  nerve-cell ;  the  fibres  are  apparently 
simple  conductors,  and  might  be  roughly  compared  to  the  con- 
ducting wires  of  a  telegraph,  while  the  cell,  being  the  centre  in 
which  nerve  force  is  generated,  may  be  compared  to  the  tele- 
graphic apparatus ;  in  it  the  effect  which  the  stimulus  of  the 
afferent  nerve  excites,  is  transmitted  along  the  efferent  nerve, 
and  therein  is  displayed  the  simplest  form  of  that  reflex  action 
which  plays  so  large  a  part  in  animal  life.f  Owing  to  the 
differences  of  kinds  of  tissue,  and  to  the  specialization  of  organs 
in  the  more  complex  animal,  there  cannot  plainly  be  that  inti- 
mate molecular  sympathy  between  all  parts  which  there  is  in 
the  homogeneous  substance  of  the  simplest  monad — not  the  easy 
motion,  as  by  an  infection,  from  particle  to  particle  in  the  hete- 

*  Philosophical  Transactions,  1862. 

t  Fibres,  simple  conductors :  Philippeau  and  Vulpian  (Comptes  Eendusvi.), 
and  Rosenthal  (Centralblatt,  K"o.  29,  1864)  hare  succeeded  in  uniting  the  central 
end  of  the  cut  lingual  nerve  with  the  peripheral  end  of  the  cut  hj'poglossal. 
The  half  of  the  tongue  of  that  side  was  paralysed,  but  stimulation  of  the  nervo 
below  the  place  of  union  produced  the  expression  of  pain,  and  movements  of  the 
animaL 


44  THE  MIND  [CHAP. 

rogeneous  body,  where  the  elements  are  of  a  different  kind ;  and 
accordingly  special  provision  is  made  for  ensuring  communica- 
tion between  different  parts,  and  for  co-ordinating  the  activity  of 
different  organs.  This  function  the  nervous  system  subserves  ; 
and  we  might  compare  it  to  that  which  the  gifted  generalizer 
fulfils  in  human  development ;  he  grasps  the  results  of  the 
various  special  investigations  which  a  necessary  division  of 
labour  enforces,  brings  them  together,  and  elaborates  a  result  in 
which  the  different  lines  of  thought  are  co-ordinated,  and  a 
unity  of  action  is  marked  out  for  future  progress.  The  nervous 
system  effects  the  synthesis  which  the  specialization  of  organic 
instruments  in  the  analysis  of  nature  renders  necessary ;  it  is 
the  highest  expression  of  that  principle  of  individuation  which 
is  the  characteristic  feature  of  life  in  all  its  forms,  but  most 
manifest  in  its  highest.  To  this  function  it  is  well  adapted, 
first,  by  the  extent  of  its  distribution,  and,  secondly,  by  its 
exceeding  sensibility,  whereby  an  impression  made  at  one  part 
is  almost  instantly  felt  at  any  distance. 

With  the  increasing  complexity  of  organization  which  marks 
the  increasing  speciality  0f  organic  adaptation  to  external  nature, 
or,  in  other  words,  which  marks  an  ascent  in  the  scale  of  animal 
life,  there  is  a  progressive  complication  of  the  nervous  system  : 
special  developments  ministering  to  special  purposes  take  place. 
The  fibres  appear  to  preserve  their  characters  as  simple  conduc- 
tors, while  a  development  of  special  structures  at  their  peripheral, 
and  of  special  ganglionic  cells  at  their  central  endings,  reveals 
the  increasing  speciality  and  complexity  of  function.  Upon  the 
special  structures  at  the  peripheral  ends,  which  are,  as  it  were, 
the  instruments  of  analysis,  depends  the  kind  of  the  impression 
made ;  and  by  the  nature  of  the  nerve-cells  with  which  the 
central  end  of  the  nerve  is  connected,  are  determined  the  kind 
of  impression  that  is  perceived,  and  the  character  of  the  reaction 
thereto.  Accordingly,  we  find  that  with  the  appearances  of  the 
organs  of  the  special  senses,  as  we  rise  in  the  scale  of  animal  life, 
there  is  a  corresponding  increase  in  the  ganglionic  centres,  which 
being  clustered  together,  form  the  primitive  rudiments  of  a  brain, 
and  represent,  in  the  main,  those  sensory  ganglia  which  in  man 
lie  between  the  decussation  of  the  pyramids  and  the  floors  of 
the  lateral  ventricles.  It  is  not  known  with  certainty  when  the 


ii.]  AND  THE  NERFOUS  SYSTEM.  45 

different  organs  of  the  special  senses  severally  make  their  first 
appearance,  for  they  are  at  first  very  rudimentary ;  but  it  is 
certain  that  special  structures,  adapted  to  the  reception  of  par- 
ticular impressions,  as  of  light,  of  sound,  of  touch,  render  the 
higher  animal  capable  of  more  numerous,  special,  and  complex 
relations  with  external  nature.* 

Not  till  we  arrive  as  high  as  the  fishes,  and  not  then  in  the 
singular  Amphioxus,  do  we  discover  anything  more  in  the  brain 
than  sensory  ganglia  connected  with  the  origins  of  nerves ;  so 
far  there  is  no  trace  of  cerebral  hemispheres,  or  of  brain  proper. 
It  is  plain  then,  that  the  cerebral  hemispheres  are  not  essential 
to  sensation  and  the  motor  reaction  to  sensation ;  for  they  are 
altogether  wanting  where  both  these  functions  are  displayed  in 
a  lively  and  vigorous  way.  To  the  simpler  relation  between  the 
individual  organism  and  external  jiature,  which  is  denoted  by 
reflex  action,  there  now  succeeds  that  more  complex  relation 
which  is  designated  sensory  perception  and  sensorimotor  reaction: 
in  place  of  reaction,  to  a  general  stimulus,  there  are  now  a  dis- 
crimination of  impressions,  and  corresponding  special  reactions 
by  virtue  of  structures  specially  adapted.  This  condition  of  the 
development  of  the  nervous  system,  which  is  natural  and  per- 
manent in  so  many  of  the  lower  animals,  corresponds  to  that 
artificial  state  of  things  which  may  be  produced  experimentally 
in  a  higher  animal  by  depriving  it  of  its  hemispheres.  The  kind 
of  function  manifest  is  strictly  comparable  to  the  early  brief 
mental  stage  of  the  infant's  life  before  the  cerebral  hemispheres 

*  When  a  special  sense  fails  in  man,  the  general  sensibility  may  partially 
replace  it.  "I  have  known  several  instances,"  says  Abercrombie,  "of  persons 
affected  with  that  extreme  degree  of  deafness,  which  occurs  in  the  deaf  and  dumb, 
who  had  a  peculiar  susceptibility  to  particular  kinds  of  sounds,  depending,  appa- 
rently, on  an  impression  communicated  to  their  organs  of  touch  or  simple  sensa- 
tion. They  could  tell,  for  instance,  the  approach  of  a  carriage  in  the  street 
without  seeing  it  before  it  was  taken  notice  of  by  persons  who  had  the  use  of  all 
their  senses." — On  the  Intellectual  Powers.  Knise,  who  was  completely  deaf, 
nevertheless  had  a  bodily  feeling  of  music;  and  different  instruments  affected 
him  differently.  Musical  tones  seemed  to  his  perception  to  have  much  analogy 
with  colours.  The  sound  of  a  trumpet  was  yellow  to  him  ;  that  of  a  drum,  red  ; 
that  of  the  organ,  green ;  &c. — Early  History  of  Mankind,  by  J.  B.  Tylor. 
In  his  Reminiscences  of  the  Opera,  Hr.  L'umley  tells  of  a  friend  who  used  to 
compare  the  voices  of  the  different  celebrated  singers  to  different  colours,  distin- 
guishing them  so.  It  is  an  old  saying  of  a  blind  man,  that  he  thought  scarlet 
was  like  the  sound  of  a  trumpet. 


46  THE  MINI)  [CHAP. 

have  come  into  action,  or  to  those  phenomena  of  mental  life 
sometimes  displayed  by  the  adult,  as  for  example  by  the  som- 
nambulists, when  the  influence  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres  is 
suspended. 

Here  let  us  make  a  reflection  :  how  important  it  is  clearly  to 
distinguish  and  denote  special  features,  which,  being  included 
under  or  described  by  a  general  term,  are  so  commonly  con- 
founded. What  different  perceptions  or  reactions,  for  example, 
are  confounded  by  the  loose  way  of  using  the  word  sensibility  ! 
The  infusorial  animalcule,  which  has  no  nervous  tissue,  is  said  to  be 
sensible  of  a  stimulus  ;  the  higher  animal,  with  its  special  senses, 
to  be  sensible  of  light,  or  of  sound,  as  the  case  may  be  ;  and,  if 
made  to  suffer,  to  be  sensible  of  pain  ;  while  it  is  common  enough 
to  speak  of  man  being  sensible  of  pleasure,  horror,  or  disgust, 
according  to  the  nature  of  the  active  ideas.  If  we  use  the  generic 
term  sensibility  to  express  the  fundamental  reaction,  as  we  may 
perhaps  properly  do,  it  is  highly  important  that  we  proceed 
further  to  distinguish  by  appropriate  terms  the  special  differences ; 
the  sensibility  of  pain  is  not  the  sensibility  of  sense,  nor  is  the 
sensibility  of  the  infusorial  equivalent  to  either  of  these.  So  far 
we  have  taken  pains  to  distinguish  that  form  of  sensibility  and 
reaction  proper  to  the  lowest  animals,  and  which  might  be  called 
irritability  ;  that  form  of  reaction,  or  reflex  action,  which  is  the 
lowest  expression  of  nervous  function ;  and  that  form  of  reac- 
tion to  which  the  sensory  ganglia  minister,  and  which  is  rightly 
called  sensorial. 

It  is  in  fishes  that  the  rudiments  of  cerebral  hemispheres  first 
appear.  In  them  they  are  represented  by  a  thin  layer  or  projec- 
tion of  nervous  matter  in  front  of  the  corpora  quadrigemina, 
covering  the  corpora  striata  and  the  optic  thalami ;  in  the 
Amphibia,  they  have  already  increased  somewhat  in  size  ;*  in 
Birds,  the  corpora  quadrigemina  are  pushed  out  to  some  extent 
by  their  further  increase  ;  in  the  Mammalia,  they  begin  to  cover 
the  corpora  quadrigemina,  and,  as  we  ascend  in  the  scale  of  life, 
gradually  increase  backwards  until,  in  some  of  the  higher 
monkeys,  and  in  man,  they  entirely  cover  the  cerebellum. 

In  this  ascent  through  the  series  of  vertebrate  animals,  it  is 

*  The  Perenni-branchiate  reptiles  retain  the  fish  character  of  brain  all  their 
lives ;  the  Batrachians  have  it  only  during  their  tadpole  state. 


ii.]  AND  THE  NERVOUS  SYSTEM.  47 

found  that  the  relations  of  the  sensory  ganglia  remain  alike 
throughout,  the  chief  differences  being  differences  in  the  relative 
size  of  them.  Their  functions  as  primary  constituents  of  the 
brain  may  then  fairly  be  counted  the  same  in  all  the  vertebrata, 
and,  indeed,  in  all  the  animals  in  which  they  exist.  As  the 
hemispheres  appear  as  secondary  constituents — secondary,  be  it 
noted,  in  the  order  of  development,  but  primary  in  dignity — we 
may  rightly  conclude  their  function  to  be  secondary  to  that  which 
the  .primary  constituents  or  sensory  ganglia  fulfil.  The  impres- 
sions received  by  the  sensory  centres  when  they  do  not  react 
directly  outwards,  as  they  may  do  where  hemispheres  exist,  and  as 
they  must  do  where  hemispheres  do  not  exist,  are  in  fact  passed 
onwards  in  the  brain  to  the  cells  which  are  spread  over  the 
hemispheres,  and  there  further  fashioned  into  what  are  called 
ideas  or  conceptions.  Here  then  we  come  to  another  kind  of  sen- 
sibility, with  its  appropriate  reaction,  to  which  a  special  nervous 
centre  ministers ;  and  it  is  known  as  perception,  or,  more  strictly, 
ideational  perception.  As  the  hemispheres  have  this  function, 
and  are  not  necessary  to  sensory  perception,  it  is  quite  in  accord- 
ance with  what  might  be  predicted,  that,  as  experiments  prove, 
they  are  insensible  to  pain,  and  do  not  give  rise  to  any  display 
of  that  kind  of  feeling  when  they  are  injured.*  They  have, 
agreeably  to  their  special  nature,  a  sensibility  of  their  own  to 
the  ideas  that  are  fashioned  in  them  ;  so  that  these  may 
be  pleasurable  or  painful,  or  have  other  particular  emotional 
qualities.f 

Observation  of  the  mental  phenomena  of  those  animals  in 
which  cerebral  hemispheres  exist,  fully  confirms  the  foregoing 
view  of  their  function  and  import.  In  Fishes  there  is  the  first 
distinct  appearance  of  simple  ideas,  and  of  the  lowest  rudiments 
of  emotion :  carp  will  collect  to  be  fed  at  the  sound  of  a  bell, 
thus  giving  evidence  of  the  association  of  two  simple  ideas  ; 
and  a  shark,  suspicious  of  mischief,  will  avoid  the  baited  hook. 
In  Birds,  conformably  to  the  increased  development  of  the 
hemispheres,  the  manifestations  of  intelligence  are  much  greater . 

*  An  animal — a  hen,  for  example — which  makes  violent  movements  while  the 
skin  is  being  cut  and  the  roof  of  its  skull  removed,  remains  quite  quiet  while  ita 
hemispheres  are  being  sliced  away  bit  by  bit. 

t  Emotion  is  strictly,  perhaps,  the  sensibility  of  the  supreme  centres  to  idea& 


48  THE  MIND  [CHAP. 

the  tricks  which  some  of  them  may  be  taught  are  truly  marvel- 
lous, and  those  who  teach  them  know  how  much  different  birds 
differ  in  intelligence  and  temper.  JSor  are  simple  emotional 
exhibitions  wanting  amongst  them ;  very  evident  at  times  is  the 
feeling  of  rivalry  or  jealousy  in  canaries,  and  there  are  undoubted 
instances  on  record  in  which  an  orphan  bird  has  owed  its  life  to 
the  kindly  care  of  birds  of  a  different  species.*  In  Mammalia  a 
gradual  advance  in  intelligence  may  be  traced  from  very  lowly 
manifestations  up  'to  those  highest  forms  of  brute  wisdom  which 
assuredly  differ  only  in  degree  from  the  lowest  forms  of  human 
intelligence.f  Consider  how  plainly,  in  the  dog,  a  conception 
often  intervenes  between  the  sensation  and  the  usual  respondent 
movement,  so  that  the  animal  refrains  from  doing  what  it  has  a 
strong  impulse  to  do  ;  the  impression  has  been  passed  on  to  the 
hemispheres,  and  their  controlling  action  brought  into  play.  It 
is  needless  to  speak  of  the  various  emotions,  nay,  the  veritable 
moral  feeling,  displayed  by  the  dog  and  other  domesticated 
animals.  A  single  reflection  will  show,  what  anatomy  might 
lead  us  to  predicate,  how  limited  is  the  range  of  animal  intelli- 
gence :  if  the  fox,  cunning  as  it  is,  had  but  the  sense  to  learn  to 
climb  a  tree,  like  the  cat,  men  would  soon  give  up  hunting  it. 
But  the  fox,  like  so  many  men,  cannot  get  out  of  the  usual  groove 
of  thought,  cannot  originate  anything;  and,  like  not  a  few 
scheming  plotters,  it  wastes  a  great  deal  of  low  cunning  in 
efforts  which  a  little  larger  view  of  things  would  render  quite 
unnecessary. 

As  we  ascend  through  the  Mammalian  series,  we  find  that  not 
only  do  the  hemispheres  increase  in  size  by  gradually  extending 
backwards,  but  that  the  grey  surface  of  them  is  further  increased 
by  being  thrown  into  folds  or  convolutions.  While  the  lower 
Mammals  are  entirely  destitute  of  such  convolutions,  these  are 
present,  as  a  rule,  in  simple  forms  in  the  Euminantia  and 
Pachydermata ;  they  are  more  fully  developed  in  the  Carnivora, 
and  most  fully  developed  in  the  apes  and  in  man.  It  is  true 
that  we  cannot  at  present  exhibit  an  exact  relation  between  the 
development  of  the  convolutions  and  the' degree  of  intelligence 

*  Anatomic  compar&e  du  Systeme  Nerveux,  par  Leuret  et  Gratiolet. 
t  For  examples  of  wonderful  intelligence  in  different  animals,  I  may  refer  to  a 
paper  by  me  on  the  Genesis  of  Mind  in  the  Journal  of  Mental  Science,  1862. 


xi.]  JND  THE  NERFOUS  SYSTEM.   '  49 

in  different  animals ;  for  the  brains  of  the  ass,  the  sheep,  and 
the  ox  are  more  convoluted  than  those  of  the  beaver,  the  cat, 
and  the  dog.  But  the  relative  size  of  the  animals  must  be  taken 
into  account  in  such  comparison.  The  volume  of  a  body  such 
as  the  brain,  which  increases  in  size,  increases  in  greater  propor- 
tion than  the  superficies,  and  the  latter  again  in  greater  proportion 
than  the  diameter.  Now  in  each  natural  group  or  order  of 
Mammalia,  the  head,  but  especially  the  capacity  of  the  skull, 
has  a  certain  relation  to  the  body,  a  relation  which  remains 
pretty  constant  in  different  species ;  the  head  of  the  tiger  or 
of  the  lion,  for  example,  has  about  the  same  relation  to  the 
body  as  that  of  the  cat's  head  to  its  body,  although  the  sizes 
of  the  animals  are  so  different.  It  follows,  then,  that,  the 
volume  of  the  brain  of  the  tiger  in  relation  to  the  size  of  the 
body  being  the  same  as  in  the  cat,  the  superficies  of  the  brain 
is  proportionately  greater  in  the  smaller  animal ;  and  that, 
consequently,  to  obtain  an  equal  extent  of  grey  superficies,  this 
must  be  convoluted  in  the  larger  animal,  when  it  may  remain 
nearly  smooth  in  the  smaller  one.  If  in  two  animals  of  equal 
size,  and  of  like  form  of  structure,  the  convolutions  are  differently 
fashioned,  then  it  may  be  said  with  certainty  that  one  will  be 
more  intelligent  than  the  other  in  proportion  as  its  convolutions 
are  more  numerous  and  complicated,  and  the  sulci  deeper. 

That  proposition  is  true  of  man.  The  intellectual  differences 
which  exist  between  the  Bosjesman,  or  the  Negro,  and  the 
European  are  attended  with  differences  in  the  extent  and  com- 
plication of  the  nervous  substance  of  the  brain.  Gratiolet  has 
carefully  figured  and  described  the  brain  of  the  Hottentot  Venus, 
who  was  no  idiot ;  and  what  is  at  once  striking  in  the  figure  is 
the  simplicity  and  regular  arrangement  of  the  convolutions  of  the 
frontal  lobe ;  they  present  an  almost  perfect  symmetry  in  the 
two  hemispheres,  "  such  as  is  never  exhibited  in  the  normal 
brains  of  the  Caucasian  race,"  and  which  involuntarily  recalls 
the  regularity  and  symmetry  of  the  cerebral  convolutions  in  the 
lower  animals.  The  brain  of  this  Bosjeswoman  was,  in  truth, 
inferior  to  that  of  white  men  arrived  at  the  normal  stage  of 
development :  "  it  could  be  compared  only  with  the  brain  of  a 
white  who  is  idiotic  from  arrest  of  cerebral  development." 
Moreover,  the  differences  between  it  and  the  brain  of  the  white 
5 


50  THE  MIND  [CIIAF. 

are  unquestionably  of  the  same  kind  as,  though  less  in  degree 
than,  those  which  exist  between  the  ape's  brain  and  that  of  man, 
as  Prof.  Huxley  has  distinctly  pointed  out.*  Mr.  Marshall  has 
recently  examined  a  Bushwoman's  brain,  and  has  found  like  evi- 
dence of  structural  inferiority  ;  the  primary  convolutions,  though 
all  present,  were  smaller  than  in  the  European,  and  much  les? 
complicated ;  the  external  connecting  convolutions  were  still 
more  remarkably  defective ;  the  secondary  sulci  and  convolu- 
tions were  everywhere  decidedly  less  developed  ;  there  was  a 
deficiency  of  the  system  of  transverse  commissural  fibres  ;  and  in 
size,  and  in  every  one  of  the  signs  of  comparative  inferiority,  "  it 
leaned,  as  it  were,  to  the  higher  quadrumanous  forms."  f  The 
brain  of  the  Negro  is  superior  to  that  of  the  Bushman,  but  still  it 
does  not  reach  the  level  of  the  white  man's  brain  ;  the  weight  of 
the  male  Negro's  brain  is  less  than  that  of  the  average  European 
female ;  and  the  greater  symmetry  of  its  convolutions,  and  the 
narrowness  of  the  hemispheres  in  front,  are  points  in  which  it 
resembles  the  brain  of  the  ourang-outang,  as  even  Tiedemann, 
the  Negro's  advocate,  has  admitted. 

Among  Europeans  it  is  found  that,  other  circumstances  being 
alike,  the  size  of  the  brain  bears  a  general  relation  to  the  mental 
power  of  the  individual,  although  apparent  exceptions  to  the 
rule  sometimes  occur.  The  average  weight  of  the  brain  in  the 
educated  class  is  certainly  greater  than  in  the  uneducated ;  and 
some  carefully-compiled  tables  in  a  valuable  paper  by  Dr. 
Thurnam  prove  that,  while  the  average  brain  weight  of  ordinary 
Europeans  is  49  oz.,  that  of  distinguished  men  is  54'6  oz.J  On 
the  other  hand,  the  brain  is  commonly  very  small  in  idiots ; 
the  parts  being  not  only  smaller,  but  less  complex,  and  the  con- 
volutions in  particular  being  simpler  and  less  developed.  Mr. 
Marshall  found  the  convolutions  of  the  cerebra  of  the  two  idiots 
which  he  examined  to  be  fewer  in  number  than  in  the  apes,  the 


*  Man's  Place  in  Nature. 

t  Philosophical  Transactions,  1865. 

J  On  the  Weight  of  the  Human  Brain,  by  John  Thurnam,  II.  D. — Journal  of 
Mental  Science,  April  1866.  Professor  Wagner  has  carefully  figured  and  described 
the  brains  of  five  very  distinguished  men.  The  extremely  complex  arrangement 
of  the  convolutions  was  most  remarkable. — The  Convolutions  of  the  Human 
Cerebrum,  by  W.  Turner,  M.B.  1866. 


n.j  AND  THE  NERVOUS  SYSTEM.  51 

brains  being  in  this  respect  more  simple  than  the  brain  of  the 
gibbon,  and  approaching  that  of  the  baboon.  In  fact,  there  are 
microcephalic  idiots  which  present  a  complete  series  of  stages 
from  men  to  the  apes.  As  a  general  proposition,  it  is  certainly 
true  that  we  find  the  evidence  of  a  correspondence  between  the 
development  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres  and  the  degree  of  intel- 
ligence, when  we  examine  the  different  races  of  men,  as  we  do 
when  we  survey  the  scale  of  animal  life. 

As  in  the  series  of  the  manifold  productions  of  her  creative 
art  Nature  has  made  no  violent  leap,  but  has  passed  by  gentle 
gradations  from  one  species  of  animal  to  another,  and  from  the 
highest  animal  to  tho  lowest  man,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the 
embryonic  development  of  man  should  plainly  reveal  the  general 
type.  It  admits  of  no  question  that  man  does,  in  the  course  of 
his  development,  pass  through  stages  closely  resembling  those 
through  which  other  vertebrate  animals  pass;  and  that  these 
transitory  conditions  in  him  are  not  unlike  the  forms  that  are 
permanent  in  the  lower  animals.  There  is  a  very  close  morpho- 
logical resemblance  between  the  human  ovum  and  the  lowest 
animals  with  which  we  are  acquainted,  the  microscopic  Grega- 
riiiida;*  in  both,  an  outer  membrane  contains  a  soft  semi-fluid 
substance,  at  one  end  of  which  is  a  delicate  vesicle,  having  in  it 
a  solid  particle  or  spot.  At  the  earliest  stages  of  its  develop- 
ment, again,  no  human  power  can  distinguish  the  human  ovum 
from  that  of  a  quadruped  ;  and,  as  it  proceeds  to  its  destined  end, 
it  passes  through  similar  stages  to  those  through  which  other 
vertebrate  embryos  pass.  That  which  is  true  of  the  whole  body 
is  true  also  of  the  development  of  the  brain.  The  brain  of  the 

*  "  The  Gregarinida,"  says  Huxley,  ' '  are  all  microscopic,  and  any  one  of  them, 
leaving  minor  modifications  aside,  may  be  said  to  consist  of  a  sac,  comprised  of  a 
more  or  less  structureless,  not  very  •well  denned  membrane,  containing  a  soft  semi- 
fluid substance,  in  the  midst,  or  at  one  end,  of  which  lies  a  delicate  vesicle  ;  in 
the  centre  of  the  latter  is  a  more  solid  particle.  ~So  doubt  many  persons  will  be 
struck  with  the  close  resemblance  of  the  structure  of  this  body  to  that  which  is 
possessed  by  the  ovum.  You  might  take  the  more  solid  particle  to  be  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  germinal  spot,  and  the  vesicle  to  be  that  of  the  germinal  vesicle  ; 
while  the  semi-fluid  sarcodic  contents  might  be  regarded  as  the  yelk,  and  the 
outer  membrane  as  the  vitelline  membrane.  I  do  not  wish  to  strain  the  analogy 
too  far,  but  it  is  at  any  rate  interesting  to  observe  the  close  morphological 
resemblance  between  one  of  the  lowest  of  animals,  and  that  form  in  which  all  tha 
higher  animals  commence  their  existence." — Lect.  on  C&mp.  Anat.,  1864. 


52  THE  MIND  [CHAP. 

human  foetus  at  the  sixth  week  consists  of  a  series  of  vesicles, 
the  anterior  of  which,  a  double  one,  representing  the  cerebrum 
is  the  smallest,  and  the  posterior,  representing  the  cerebellum, 
the  largest.  In  front  of  the  latter  is  the  vesicle  of  the  corpora 
quadrigemina  ;  and  in  front  again  of  this,  the  vesicle  of  the  third 
ventricle,  which  contains  also  the  thalami  optici,  and  which,  as 
development  proceeds,  becomes  covered,  as  do  the  corpora  quad- 
rigemina, by  the  backward  growth  of  the  hemispheres  in  front  of 
it.  At  this  stage  the  human  brain  resembles  the  fully-formed 
brain  of  the  fish,  more  closely  the  brain  of  the  foetal  fish,  in  the 
small  proportion  which  the  cerebral  hemispheres  bear  to  the 
other  parts,  in  the  absence  of  convolutions,  in  the  deficiency  of 
commissures,  and  in  the  general  simplicity  of  structure.  About 
the  twelfth  week  of  embryonic  life  there  is  a  great  resemblance 
to  the  brain  of  the  bird:  the  cerebral  hemispheres  are  much 
increased  in  size,  and  arch  back  towards  the  thalami  optici  and 
the  corpora  quadrigemina,  though  there  are  still  no  convolutions, 
and  the  commissures  are  very  deficient.  Up  to  this  time  the 
cerebral  hemispheres  represent  no  more  than  the  rudiments  of 
the  anterior  lobes  ;  they  do  not  yet  completely  cover  the  thalami 
optici,  nor  indeed  pass  the  grade  of  development  which  is  per- 
manent in  the  Marsupial  Mammalia.  During  the  fourth  and 
early  part  of  the  fifth  month,  the  middle  lobes  develop  back- 
wards and  cover  the  corpora  quadrigemina ;  and,  subsequently, 
the  posterior  lobes  sprout  out,  so  to  speak,  and  gradually  extend 
backwards  so  as  to  cover  and  overlap  the  cerebellum.  It  was 
upon  the  erroneous  assumption  that  the  posterior  lobes  were 
peculiar  to  man,  that  Professor  Owen  grounded  his  division  of 
the  Archencephala  ;  but  it  has  now  been  proved  unquestionably 
that  the  posterior  lobes  exist  in  the  apes,  and  that  in  some  of 
them  they  extend  as  far  back  as  they  do  in  man.  It  is  easy  to 
perceive,  then,  that  an  arrest  of  development  of  the  human  brain 
may  leave  it  very  much  in  the  condition  of  an  animal  brain ; 
and  it  is  found  in  some  cases,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  congenital 
idiots  have  brains  very  like  those  of  the  monkeys. 

As  man  is  thus  a  sort  of  compendium  of  animal  nature, 
parallels  nature,  as  Sir  Thomas  Browne  has  it,  in  the  cosmo- 
graphy of  himself,  all  the  different  modes  of  nervous  action  are 
exhibited  in  the  workings  of  his  organism.  The  so-called 


n.]  AND  THE  NERFOUS  SYSTEM.  53 

irritability  of  tissue,  whereby  it  reacts  to  a  stimulus  without  the 
help  of  nerve,  may  be  of  the  same  kind  as  that  molecular 
energy  of  matter  manifest  in  the  movements  of  the  humblest 
animal;  whether  the  nerve  ends  outside  the  sarcolernma  of 
muscle,  or  within  it,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  is  not  dis- 
tributed to  every  part  of  the  sarcous  element ;  and,  at  any  rate, 
when  all  nervous  influence  is  withdrawn,  an  energy  still  exists 
sufficient  to  produce  rigor  mortis  of  the  muscle.*  The  simplest 
mode  of  nervous  action  in  man,  comparable  to  that  of  the  lowest 
animals  that  possess  nerve,  is  exhibited  by  the  scattered  gang- 
lionic  cells  which  are  concerned  in  certain  organic  processes : 
the  heart's  action,  for  example,  is  due  to  the  ganglionic  cells 
dispersed  through  its  substance.  Meissner  has  recently  shown 
that  nerve  cells  disseminated  through  the  tissues  of  the  intestines 
govern  their  motions ;  and  Lister  thinks  it  probable  that  cells 
scattered  in  the  tissues  preside  over  the  contractions  of  the 
arteries,  and  even  the  diffusion  of  the  pigment  granules  in  the 
stellate  cells  of  the  frog's  skin.  The  separate  elements  of  the 
tissue  are  co-ordinated  by  the  individual  nerve  cells ;  and  these 
co-ordinating  centres,  again,  are  found  to  be  under  the  control 
of  the  cerebro-spinal  centres.  In  the  spinal  cord  the  ganglionic 
nerve  cells  are  collected  together,  and  so  united  that  groups  of 
them  become  independent  centres  of  combined  movements 
in  answer  to  stimuli;  this  arrangement  representing  also  the 
entire  nervous  system  of  those  animals  in  which  no  organs  of 
special  sense  have  yet  appeared.  Still  higher  in  the  scale  of  the 
nervous  system,  the  sensory  ganglia,  formed  of  multitudes  of 
specially  endowed  cells,  are  clustered  together,  and  form  a  very 
important  part  of  the  brain  of  man,  while  in  many  animals,  as 
already  seen,  they  constitute  the  whole  of  the  brain.  In  the 
cerebral  hemispheres  there  is  a  still  greater  specialization  of 
structure ;  and,  conformably  to  its  highest  degree  in  man,  there 
are  in  him  the  most  complex  manifestations  of  mental  function. 
In  the  human  organism,  then,  is  summed  up  the  animal  kingdom, 

*  It  has  recently  been  maintained  by  Bilharz  and  Kiihne,  that  the  nerves  pass 
by  continuity  into  the  muscular  substance,  as  in  the  electric  organs  of  the  fishes 
they  pass  continuously  into  the  protoplasm  of  the  electric  plates.  Pfliiger  has 
found  also  that  the  nerves  to  the  glands  penetrate  the  walls  of  the  cells,  and  end 
in  the  nuclei.— Pfliiger,  Die  Endigungen  der  Absonderungsnerven,  1866. 


54  THE  MIND  [CHAP. 

which  actually  presents  us  with  a  sort  of  analysis  of  it ;  for  in 
the  functions  of  man  we  observe,  as  in  a  microcosm,  an  integra- 
tion and  harmonious  co-ordination  of  different  vital  actions 
which  are  separately  displayed  by  different  members  of  the 
animal  kingdom. 

In  dealing  with  the  function  of  the  nervous  system  in  man, 
it  is,  then,  most  necessary  to  distinguish  the  different  nervous 
centres  : — 

1.  There  are  the  primary  centres,  or  idcational  centres,  consti- 
tuted by  the  grey  matter  of  the  convolutions  of  the  hemispheres. 

2.  There   are  the  secondary  nervous  centres,   or  sensational 
centres,  constituted  by  the  collections  of  grey  matter  that  lie 
between  the  decussation  of  the  pyramids  and  the  floors  of  the 
lateral  ventricles. 

3.  There  are  the  tertiary  nervous  centres,  or  centres  of  reflex 
action,  constituted  mainly  by  the  grey  matter  of  the  spinal  cord. 

4.  There  are  quaternary  nervous  centres,  or  organic  nervous 
centres,  as  we  might  call  them,  belonging  to  the  sympathetic 
system. 

Each  distinct  centre  is  subordinated  to  the  centre  immediately 
above  it,  but  is  at  the  same  time  capable  of  determining  and 
maintaining  certain  movements  of  its  own  without  the  inter- 
vention of  its  supreme  centre.  The  organization  is  such  that  a 
due  independent  local  action  is  compatible  with  the  proper 
control  of  a  superior  central  authority.  The  ganglicnic  cell  of 
the  sympathetic  co-ordinates  the  energy  of  the  separate  ele- 
ments of  the  tissue  in  which  it  is  placed,  and  thus  represents 
the  simplest  form  of  a  principle  of  individuation  ;  through  the 
cells  of  the  spinal  centre  the  functions  of  the  different  organic 
centres  are  so  co-ordinated  as  to  have  their  subordinate  but 
essential  place  in  the.  movements  of  animal  life, — and  herein  is 
witnessed  a  further  and  higher  individuation ;  *  the  spinal 
centres  are  similarly  controlled  by  the  sensory  centres,  and  the 
sensory  centres,  in  their  turn,  are  subordinate  to  the  controlling 
action  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres,  and  especially  to  the  action 
of  the  will,  which,  properly  fashioned,  represents  the  highest 

*  Coleridge,  in  his  "  Hints  towards  the  Formation  of  a  comprehensive  Theory 
of  iLife,"  takes  from  Schelling  the  definition — "  Life  is  the  principle  of  Indi- 
viduation." 


IL]  AND  THE  NERVOUS  SYSTEM.  55 

display  of  the  principle  of  individuation.  The  greater  the  sub- 
ordination of  parts  in  any  animal,  the  higher  and  the  more 
perfect  it  is.*  Were  it  not  well  if  man  in  his  social  life  could 
contrive  to  imitate  this  excellent  organization  ? 

Most  important  and  varied  functions  having  been  assigned  to 
nerve  cells,  it  may  be  asked,  On  what  evidence  do  the  statements 
rest  ?  On  the  evidence  of  anatomical  investigation,  experiments 
upon  animals,  and  physiological  and  pathological  researches. 

(a)  Anatomical  Evidence. — It  is  certainly  not  possible  to  trace 
every  nerve  fibre  to  its  connexion  with  a  cell,  and  till  lately  no 
such  connexion  had  been  distinctly  seen ;  but  it  has  now  been 
observed  in  many  instances,  and  all  competent  investigators 
believe  that  neither  in  the  brain  nor  in  the  spinal  cord  does 
there  exist  an  isolated  apolar  nerve  cell ;  such,  if  supposed  to  be 
seen,  being  in  reality  one  which  has  had  its  processes  torn  away, 
or  not  being  a  nerve  cell  at  all,  but  a  connective  tissue  cor- 
puscle. This  is  an  inference  which  has  scarcely  less  certainty 
than  an  observed  fact ;  it  is  not  necessary,  as  Goethe  has  said,  to 
travel  round  the  world  in  order  to  feel  sure  that  the  heavens  are 
everywhere  above  it. 

Granting  the  constant  connexion  of  the  fibre  with  the  cell,  are 
the  ganglionic  cells  so  numerous  and  so  arranged  as  to  render  it 
conceivable  that  they  can  adequately  minister  to  the  manifold, 
complex  manifestations  of  our  mental  life  ? 

Most  certainly :  Mr.  Lockhart  Clarke  finds  that  most  of  the 
convolutions  of  the  human  brain  consist  of  no  less  than  eight 
distinct  and  concentric  layers,  formed  chiefly  of  fine,  closely- 
packed  fibres,  and  of  crowds  of  cells  of  very  different  shapes,  the 
layers  differing  in  the  relative  proportion  of  cells  and  fibres, 
and  in  the  manner  of  their  arrangement.  The  fibres  are  fre- 
quently seen  to  become  continuous  with  the  processes  of  the 
cells ;  and  the  general  result  of  minute  research  is,  that  an 
infinite  number  of  communications  in  all  directions  exist 
between  an  infinite  multitude  of  cells  of  all  varieties  of  shape — 

*  After  speaking  of  an  organism  as  a  collection  of  individual  elements,  Goethe 
goes  on  to  say  : — "  Je  unvolkommener  das  Geschbpf  ist  desto  mehr  sind  diese 
Tbeile  einander  gleick  oder  ahnlich,  und  desto  mehr  gleichen  sie  dem  Ganzen. 
Je  volkommener  des  Geschopf  \vird,  desto  unahnlicher  \verden  die  Theile  einander. 
Je  ahnlicher  die  Theile  einander  sind,  desto  weniger  sind  sie  einander  sub- 
ordinirt.  Die  Subordination  der  Theile  deutet  auf  sin  volkommeneres  Geschopf." 


56  THE  MIND  [CIIAP. 

pyramidal,  pyriform,  triangular,  round,  oval,  or  fusiform.*  Bear 
in  mind  that  the  grey  matter  of  the  convolutions  is  thickly 
beset  with  these  countless  thousands  of  ganglionic  cells  varying 
in  diameter  from  the  1^^00th  to  -^nrth  of  an  inch. 

But  if  the  cells,  so  small  and  apparently  so  like,  have  such 
different  functions,  it  is  necessary  to  assume  that  there  must  "be 
differences  in  their  structure  or  composition.  Most  likely  such 
differences  there  are,  though  we  have  not  yet  means  subtle 
enough  to  detect  them.  Mr.  Clarke  has,  however,  found  some 
modifications  in  the  structure  of  different  convolutions.  Those 
at  the  end  of  the  posterior  lobe,  for  example,  are  not  only  marked 
by  the  greater  distinctness  of  their  laminae,  but  contain  a  greater 
number  of  cells  of  a  muck  larger  kind  than  usual — peculiar 
pyramidal  cells  with  quadrangular  bases,  which  give .  off  four 
/  or  more  processes,  the  opposite  end  of  the  cell  tapering  into  a 
straight  process,  which  runs  towards  the  surface,  giving  off 
minute  branches,  and  becomes  lost  in  the  surrounding  network. 
The  cells  of  the  convolutions  in  man,  again,  certainly  differ  in 
some  respects  from  those  of  the  larger  Mammalia,  as  the  ox, 
she'ep,  and  cat.  Schroeder  van  der  Kolk  has  found  a  different 
structure  of  the  grey  substance  in  the  anterior  and  posterior 
lobes  of  the  dog  and  the  rabbit :  in  the  anterior  lobes  of  the 
rabbit  there  are  bundles  of  fibres,  with  cells,  mostly  tripolar, 
between  them ;  in  the  posterior  lobes  there  is  a  regular  series  of 
pedunculated  cells,  which  are  placed  close  to  one  another,  like 
organ  pipes  ;  there  are  also  single  larger  cells.  As  the  result  of 
his  investigations,  continued  through  an  industrious  lifetime,  he 
states  positively  that,  wherever  there  are  differences  of  function, 
there  differences  of  structure  and  composition  and  connexion 
do  exist;  "microscopical  investigation  has  established  this  in 
the  completest  manner."  f 

Howbeit  there  are  observable  differences  in  the  size  and  con- 
figuration of  the  cells  of  the  cortical  layer,  as  of  the  cells  of 
other  centres,  yet  it  is  clear  that  we  cannot  at  present  penetrate 
those  intimate  special  differences  in  constitution  which  the 
variety  of  their  functions  implies.  These  essential  differences 

*  Proceedings  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xii.  1863. 

t  Die    Pathologie   und   Therapie    der    Geisteskrankheiten    auf   Anatomisch- 
Physiologischer  Grundlage.     Von  J.  L.  C.  Schroeder  van  der  Kolk,  1863. 


n.]  AND  THE  XER70US  SYSTEM.  57 

are  not  such,  indeed,  as  the  microscope  is  ever  likely  to  reveal ; 
for  they  probably  depend  on  the  intimate  chemical  composition, 
and  are  not  likely,  even  if  we  could  isolate  cells  as  required,  to 
be  disclosed  until  chemistry  has  arrived  at  a  microscopical 
application,  or  until  some  means  has  been  discovered  of  pene- 
trating the  molecular  constitution  of  nervous  element.  Those 
who  may  be  disposed  to  think  it  impossible  that  such  important 
constitutional  differences  should  exist  in  so  small  a  compass, 
might  reflect  with  advantage  on  the  various  undetectable  con- 
ditions which  may  confessedly  exist  in  the  minutest  organic 
matter  ;  as,  for  example,  in  the  delicate  microscopic  spermatozoon, 
or  in  the  intangible  virus  of  a  fever.  Consider,  again,  the  infinite 
littleness  of  the  odorous  particles  that  affect  the  smell,  and, 
more  wonderful  still,  the  marvellous  discriminating  suscepti- 
bility of  sense  to  so  minute  agents.  Of  what  may  happen  in  a 
world  into  which  human  senses  have  not  yet  been  able  to  enter 
we  are  no  more  entitled  to  speak  than  the  blind  man  is  to  talk 
of  the  appearance  of  objects.  In  such  matter  it  would  be  more 
wise  to  adopt  Tertullian's  maxim,  "  Credo  quia  impossible  est," 
than  that  which  is  so  much  favoured  by  the  conceit  of  human 
ignorance — that  a  thing  is  impossible  because  it  appears  to  be 
inconceivable. 

(6)  Experiments  on  Animals  have  distinctly  proved  the  differ- 
ences between  the  functions  of  the  ganglionic  cells  that  constitute 
the  principal  different  nervous  centres ;  but  such  results  will 
more  properly  find  their  place  afterwards.  Let  it  suffice  here  to 
say  that  the  sight  of  an  animal  may  be  destroyed  by  injury  to 
its  corpora  quadrigemina  as  surely  as  by  burning  out  its  eyes. 
Nothing,  however,  has  yet  been  done  by  experiments  towards 
distinguishing  the  functions  of  different  convolutions. 

(c)  Physiological  Evidence. — The  study  of  the  plan  of  develop- 
ment of  the  nervous  system  through  the  animal  kingdom,  with 
the  corresponding  progress  in  complexity  of  function,  undoubtedly 
furnishes  the  best  testimony  in  favour  of  differences  in  the 
constitution  and  function  of  the  nerve  cells.  That  evidence  has 
already  been  sufficiently  set  forth. 

The  hopeless  vanity  of  all  discussions  concerning  infinite  or 
absolute  truth  might  well  have  been  made  manifest  by  this 
physiological  reflection :  that  our  perception  of  external  nature 


58  THE  MIND  [CHAP. 

is  the  effect  which  the  object  produces,  through  an  adapted 
medium,  in  certain  of  our  central  nervous  cells,  an  effect  on 
which  we  can  exercise  no  influence.  Excite  that  condition  of 
the  central  cell  othewrise  than  by  the  stimulus  from  without, 
the  perception  does  not  fail  to  ensue  :  a  blow  on  the  eye  produces 
flashes  of  light ;  on  closing  the  eyes  after  looking  at  the  sun  a 
spectrum  of  it  remains,  which,  as  it  slowly  fades  away,  may  be 
brightened  and  darkened  alternately  for  a  time  by  pressing  the 
eye  and  removing  the  pressure  ;  a  disturbance  of  the  circulation 
in  the  auditory  ganglia  gives  rise  to  noises  in  the  ears  :  in  fact, 
all  the  senses  may  be  excited  subjectively.  The  reason  is 
evident :  because  the  perception  depends  upon  the  special  nature 
of  the  central  cells  and  the  mechanism  by  which  the  stimulus 
is  conveyed  to  them.  Accordingly,  the  effect  of  any  stimulus 
capable  of  affecting  one  of  the  special  senses  is  of  the  same  kind 
as  that  produced  by  its  proper  stimulus  :  thus  the  effect  of  the 
electric  stimulus  on  the  optic  ganglia  is  to  cause  light ;  on  the 
olfactory  nerves,  some  kind  of  smell ;  on  the  gustatory  nerves, 
some  kind  of  taste.  This  is  as  clear  evidence  as  any  one  can 
desire  of  specific  differences  between  nervous  cells  which  to  the 
eye  often  appear  exactly  alike.  That  man  is  by  nature  thus 
limited  to  the  reception  of  certain  special  impressions  through  a 
few  avenues,  proves  how  limited  must  be  his  knowledge  at  the 
best :  it  may  well  be  that  there  are  many  things  in  nature  of 
which  he  has  not,  and  cannot  have,  any  kind  of  knowledge ; 
and  that  a  new  sense  conferred  upon  him  might  alter  the  whole 
aspect  of  the  universe. 

What  is  true  of  the  cells  of  the  sensory  ganglia  is  probably 
no  less  true  of  the  cells  of  the  higher  centres  of  intelligence. 
There  is  reason  to  assume  differences,  not  merely  between  the 
ganglionic  cells  of  one  lobe  of  the  brain  and  those  of  another,  but 
also  between  one  cell  or  group  of  cells  and  another  cell  or  group 
of  cells.  The  law  of  progress  from  the  general  to  the  special 
in  development  does  not  cease  its  action  suddenly  at  the  cere- 
bral hemispheres.  The  philosopher  is  not,  it  is  true,  in  posses- 
sion of  more  senses  than  the  savage  ;  but  he  unquestionably  has 
more  numerous  and  complex  convolutions,  and,  therefore,  many 
more  ganglionic  cells  in  the  primary  centres  of  intelligence. 
By  intending  his  mind  to  the  realities  of  external  nature  he 


n.]  AND  THE  NER70US  SYSTEM.  59 

acquires  information  through  the  senses,  but  his  intelligence 
reacts  advantageously  upon  the  senses;  he  constructs  instru- 
ments which  extend  their  power  of  observation, — thus  acquires, 
as  it  were,  new  artificial  senses,  so  that  hitherto  obscure  relations 
of  external  nature  are  disclosed  to  him,  and  he  attains  to  more 
special  and  complex  relations  therewith.  If  cortical  cells  of 
a  higher  quality  than  the  savage  has,  do  not  answer  to  this 
increased  speciality  and  complexity,  it  is  contrary  to  all  the 
analogy  of  organic  development,  as  it  is  also  an  unintelligible 
freak  of  nature  to  have  crowded  the  hemispherical  ganglia  with 
cells  which  are  mere  repetitions  of  one  another. 

(d)  Pathological  Evidence. — This  will  be  brought  forward  in 
detail  at  a  later  period.  Let  it  suffice  here  to  say,  that 
Schroeder  van  der  Kolk  can  venture  to  assert  that  he  never 
failed  to  discover  pathological  changes,  and  that,  when  intellec- 
tual disorder  especially  has  existed  in  madness,  he  has  found 
the  cortical  layer  under  the  frontal  bones  to  be  darker  coloured, 
more  firmly  connected  with  the  pia  mater,  or  softened ;  in  melan- 
cholia, on  the  other  hand,  where  the  feelings  chiefly  are  excited 
or  depressed,  the  pathological  changes  were  found  rather  in  the 
convolutions  of  the  upper  and  hind  lobes.  In  old  age,  when  the 
memory  fails,  he  thinks  that  the  cells  of  the  cortical  layer  are 
visibly  atrophied.  The  very  many  and  various  disorders  to 
which  the  memory  is  liable,  failures  of  every  possible  degree  and 
character,  which  can  only  be  described  by  being  given  in  detail, 
surely  indicate  in  no  uncertain  way  the  different  nature  of  dif- 
ferent cells  in  the  cortical  layer. 

Thus  much,  then,  by  way  of  setting  forth  facts  which  will  not 
easily  be  discredited.  "What  is  the  unavoidable  conclusion? 
That  no  true  scientific  result  can  possibly  proceed  from  the 
vague  and  general  employment,  without  further  discrimination, 
of  mental  action  to  embrace  phenomena  of  such  manifestly 
different  nature.  If  the  psychologists  had  duly  minded  the  old 
but  wholesome  maxim,  that  whosoever  distinguishes  well  teaches 
well,  they  might  have  found  even  in  the  revelations  of  self- 
consciousness,  when  interpreted  without  bias,  those  distinctions 
which  an  investigation  into  the  physiology  of  the  nervous  system 
in  man  and  animals  establishes  beyond  all  question.  But  the 
metaphysical  conception  of  mind,  the  abstraction  made  into  an 


60  THE  MIND  [CHAP. 

entity,  lias  overridden  all  discerning  observation,  and,  blending 
well-marked  differences  into  a  vague  obscurity,  has  constructed 
a  loose  system  of  undefined  words  in  place  of  an  exact  and  posi- 
tive science  of  facts.  Instead  of  mind  being,  as  assumed,  a 
wondrous  entity,  the  independent  source  of  power  and  self-suffi- 
cient cause  of  causes,  an  honest  observation  proves  incontestably 
that  it  is  the  most  dependent  of  all  the  natural  forces.  It  is  the 
highest  development  of  force,  and  to  its  existence  all  the  lower 
natural  forces  are  indispensably  pre-requisite. 

It  is  most  needful,  if  we  would  avoid  hopeless  confusion  and 
often-made  error,  once  for  all  to  form  a  just  and  definite  concep- 
tion of  what  we  mean  by  mental  force,  and  of  its  position  in 
nature.  To  deal  with  mind  apart  from  the  consideration  of  the 
matter  through  the  changes  of  which  it  is  manifested  is  truly  no 
less  vain  and  absurd  than  it  would  confessedly  be  to  attempt  to 
handle  electricity  and  gravitation  as  forces  apart  from  the  changes 
in  matter  by  which  alone  we  know  them.  As  there  are  different 
kinds  of  matter,  so  there  are  different  modes  of  force,  in  the  uni- 
verse ;  and  as  we  rise  from  the  common  physical  matter  in  which 
physical  laws  hold  sway  up  to  chemical  matter  and  chemical 
forces,  and  from  chemical  matter  again  up  to  living  matter  and 
its  modes  of  force,  so  do  we  rise  in  the  scale  of  life  from  the 
lowest  kind  of  living  matter,  with  its  corresponding  force  or 
energy,  through  different  kinds  of  histological  elements,  with 
their  corresponding  energies  or  functions,  up  to  the  highest  kind 
of  living  matter  and  corresponding  mode  of  force  with  which  we 
are  acquainted,  viz.  nerve  element  and  nerve  force.  But,  when 
we  have  got  to  nerve  element  and  nerve  force,  it  behoves  us  not 
to  rest  content  with  the  general  idea,  but  to  trace,  with  attentive 
discrimination,  through  the  nervous  system  the  different  kinds 
of  nervous  cells,  and  their  different  manifestations  of  energy. 
So  only  shall  we  obtain  the  groundwork  of  a  true  conception  of 
the  relations  of  mind  and  the  nervous  system. 

The  chief  feature  to  be  noted  in  this  upward  transformation 
of  matter  and  correlative  metamorphosis  of  force  is,  that  the 
exaltation  or  transpeciation  on  each  occasion  represents  an 
increased  speciality  of  elements,  and  a  greater  complexity  of 
combinations  in  a  smaller  space :  all  exaltation  of  matter  and 
force  is,  as  it  were,  a  concentration  thereof.  As  one  equivalent 


ii.j  AND  THE  NERVOUS  SYSTEM.  61 

of  chemical  force  corresponds  to  several  equivalents  of  inferior 
force,  and  one  equivalent  of  vital  force  to  several  equivalents  of 
chemical  force ;  so  in  the  scale  of  tissues  the  higher  kind  repre- 
sents a  more  complex  elementary  constitution,  and  a  greater 
number  of  simultaneously  acting  forces,  than  the  kind  of  tissue 
below  it  in  dignity.  If  we  suppose  a  higher  tissue  to  undergo 
decomposition,  or  retrograde  metamorphosis  of  its  matter,  with 
which  must  necessarily  coincide  a  resolution  of  its  energy  into 
lower  modes,  then  we  might  say  that  a  single  monad  of  the 
higher  tissue,  or  one  equivalent  of  its  force,  would  equal  in  value 
several  monads  of  the  lower  kind  of  tissue,  or  several  equivalents 
of  its  force.  The  characteristic  of  living  matter  is  the  com- 
plexity of  combinations  and  the  variety  of  elements  in  so  small 
a  compass  that  we  cannot  yet  trace  them ;  and  in  nervous  tissue 
this  complication  and  concentration  is  carried  to  its  highest 
pitch.  Nervous  tissue  with  its  energy  is,  therefore,  dependent 
for  its  existence  on  all  the  lower  kinds  of  tissue  that  have  pre- 
ceded it  in  the  order  of  development :  all  the  force  of  nature 
could  not  develop  a  nerve-cell  directly  out  of  inorganic  matter. 
The  highest  energy  in  nature  is  really  the  most  dependent ;  in 
the  fact  that  it  is  so  dependent,  that  it  implicitly  contains  the 
essence  or  abstraction  of  all  the  lower  kinds  of  energy,  lies  the 
reason  of  the  powerful  influence  which  it  is  able  to  exercise  over 
all  the  lower  forces  that  are  subservient  to  its  evolution.  As  the 
man  of  genius  implicitly  contains  humanity,  so  nervous  element 
implicitly  contains  nature.* 

"What"  is  the  progress  or  nisus  that  is  manifest  on  survey- 
ing nature  as  a  whole?  Is  it  not  the  struggle  to  arrive  at 
consciousness,  to  attain  to  self-communion  ?  In  the  series  of 
her  manifold  productions  man  was,  so  to  speak,  says  Goethe, 
the  first  dialogue  that  Nature  held  with  God.  Every  poet, 
then,  who  is  sensitive  to  a  hitherto  unrevealed  subtlety  of 
human  feeling,  every  philosopher  who  apprehends  and  reveals 
a  hitherto  unobserved  relation  in  nature,  is,  each  in  his 
place,  aiding  the  onward  progress ;  in  his  art  nature  is 


*  For  the  further  development  of  this  view  of  life,  I  may  refer  to  an  article 
on  the  "  Theory  of  Vitality,"  in  the  British  and  Foreign  Med.-Chir.  Review, 
October,  1863. 


62  THE  MIND  AND  THE  NERFOUS  SYSTEM.          [CHAP.  IL 

undergoing    evolution;    in    him    the   world  is,   more   or  less, 
regenerate. 

"To  whom  the  winged  hierarch  replied  : — 
0  Adam,  one  Almighty  is,  from  whom 
All  things  proceed,  and  up  to  Him  return, 
If  not  depraved  from  good,  created  all 
Such  to  perfection,  one  first  matter  all, 
Endowed  with  various  forms,  various  degrees 
Of  substance,  and  in  things  that  live,  of  life  ; 
But  more  refined,  more  spirituous,  and  pure ; 
As  nearer  to  Him  placed,  or  nearer  tending, 
Each  in  their  several  active  spheres  assigned, 
Till  body  up  to  spirit  work,  in  bounds 
Proportioned  to  each  kind.     So  from  the  root 
Springs  higher  the  green  stalk,  from  thence  the  leaves 
More  airy,  last  the  bright  consummate  flower 
Spirits  odorous  breathes  :  flowers  and  their  fruit, 
Man's  nourishment,  by  gradual  scale  sublimed, 
To  vital  spirits  aspire,  to  animal, 
To  intellectual ;  give  both  life  and  sense, 
Fancy  and  understanding;  whence  the  soul 
Reason  receives,  and  reason  is  her  being, 
Discursive  or  intuitive;  discourse 
Is  oftest  yours,  the  latter  most  is  ours, 
Differing  but  in  degree,  of  kind  the  same." 

Paradise  Lost,  B.  v. 


CHAPTEK  III. 

THE  SPINAL  CORD,    OR  TERTIARY  NERFOUS   CENTRES;    OR 
NERFOUS  CENTRES  OF  REFLEX  ACTION. 

OMITTING  for  the  present  any  mention  of  the  organic 
nervous  centres  of  the  sympathetic  system — first,  because 
very  little  is  definitely  known  about  them ;  and,  secondly, 
because  something  will  be  said  of  them  when  treating  of  the 
Passions — we  go  on  to  show  forth  the  functions  of  the  spinal 
cord.  A  large  part  of  human  activity  notably  takes  place 
without  any  voluntary  control,  or  even  without  any  conscious- 
ness on  the  part  of  the  individual ;  and  of  these  unconscious  or 
involuntary  actions  a  great  part  is  as  plainly  due  to  the  inde- 
pendent power  of  reaction  which  the  ganglionic  cells  of  the 
spinal  cord  have.  Such  automatic  action  of  the  spinal  cord, 
manifest  enough  in  man,  but  still  more  so  in  the  lower  animals, 
may  be  illustrated  both  from  the  animal  kingdom  and  from  the 
phenomena  of  human  life. 

When  the  earliest  actions  of  the  new-born  infant  are  observed, 
it  is  plain  that,  like  the  movements  of  the  foetus  within  the 
mother's  womb,  or  the  movements  of  many  of  the  lower  animals, 
they  are  simply  reflex  to  impressions,  and  take  place  without 
will,  or  even  without  consciousness.  The  anencephalic  infant,  in 
which  absence  of  brain  involves  an  absence  of  consciousness, 
not  only  exhibits  movements  of  its  limbs,  but  is  capable  also  of 
the  associated  reflex  acts  of  sucking  and  crying.  A  decapitated 
frog,  to  the  thigh  of  which  acetic  acid  has  been  applied,  makes 
certain  movements  for  the  purpose  of  wiping  off  the  acid ;  and 
if  the  head  of  a  frog,  which  is  clinging  to  the  female  at  the  season 
of  copulation,  be  cut  off,  the  animal  still  holds  on  to  her,  nay,  if 
its  paw  be  further  cut  off,  clings  to  her  with  its  bloody  stump. 
The  spinal  cord  is  plainly,  then,  not  only  a  centre  of  irregular 


64  'THE  SPINAL  CORD;  OR,  [CHAP. 

reflex  movements,  but  it  is  also  a  centre  of  co-ordinate  or  so-called 
designed  actions.  Pfiiiger  wetted  with  acetic  acid  the  thigh  of  a 
decapitated  frog  over  its  internal  condyle ;  it  wiped  it  off  with 
the  dorsal  surface  of  the  foot  of  the  same  side  :  he  thereupon  cut 
off  the  foot,  and  applied  the  acid  to  the  same  spot ;  the  animal, 
as  though  it  were  deceived,  as  the  man  who  has  lost  a  limb  at 
first  is,  by  an  eccentric  sensation,  would  have  wiped  it  off  again 
with  the  foot  of  that  side,  but  of  course  could  not.  After  some 
fruitless  efforts,  therefore,  it  ceased  to  try  in  that  way,  seemed 
unquiet,  "  as  though  it  were  searching  for  some  new  means,"  and 
at  last  it  either  made  use  of  the  foot  of  the  leg  which  was  left, 
or  it  so  bent  the  mutilated  limb  that  it  succeeded  in  wiping  it 
against  the  side  of  its  body.  So  much  was  Pfliiger  impressed  by 
this  wonderful  adaptation  of  means  to  an  end  in  a  headless 
animal,  that  he  actually  inferred  that  the  spinal  cord,  like  the 
brain,  was  possessed  of  sensorial  functions.  Others,  who  would 
scarce  admit  the  supposition  to  be  true  of  man,  have  thought 
that  it  might  be  so  of  some  of  the  lower  animals.  Instead  of 
rightly  grounding  their  judgment  of  the  complex  phenomena  in 
man  on  their  experience  of  the  simpler  instances*  exhibited  by 
the  lower  animals,  they  applied  to  the  lower  animals  their  sub- 
jective misinterpretation  of  the  complex  phenomena  in  man^1) 

It  is  obviously  quite  possible  to  draw  another  inference  from 
Pfliiger's  experiment :  that  the  so-called  design  of  an  act  does 
not  necessarily  witness  to  the  co-existenoe  of  will,  forethought,  or 
consciousness ;  that  actions  "  having  the  semblance  of  prede- 
signing  consciousness"  may,  nevertheless,  be  unattended  with 
consciousness.  No  doubt  there  is  a  definite  purpose  in  the 
movements  which  the  maimed  frog  makes,  as  there  is  definite 
purpose  in  the  movements  of  the  anencephalic  infant's  lips,  or  in 
the  respiratory  movements  of  man  or  animal ;  but  in  all  these 
instances  the  co-ordinate  activity  is  the  result  of  an  innate  nervous 
constitution,  an  original  endowment  of  the  nervous  centres. 
Accordingly  we  see  that  the  frog  which  has  lost  its  leg  acts  as  if 
the  limbs  were  still  there,  which,  were  there  intelligent  conscious- 
ness, it  plainly  should  not,  arid  only  employs  other  means  when 
the  irritating  notion  of  the  stimulus  continues  unaffected  by  its 
efforts.  As  in  certain  morbid  states  of  the  human  organism  the 
continuance  of  an  irritation,  which  at  first  only  causes  slight 


1 1 i.l  TERTIARY  NERVOUS  CENTRES,  ETC.  65 

reflex  action,  may  produce  a  more  general  involuntary  reaction 
or  convulsions  ;  so  in  the  frog,  the  enduring  stimulus,  which  has 
not  been  affected  by  the  customary  reflex  movement,  now  gives 
rise  to  those  further  physiological  movements  which  would  have 
been  made  use  of  had  the  frog  still  possessed  its  brain.  In  the 
constitution  of  the  spinal  cord  are  implanted  the  capabilities  of 
such  co-ordinate  energies  ;  and  the  degree  of  the  irritation  deter- 
mines the  extent  of  the  activity.  But  this  takes  place  without 
consciousness ;  and  all  the  design  which  there  is  in  the  move- 
ment is  of  the  same  kind  as  the  design  which  there  is  in  the 
formation  of  a  crystal,  or  in  the  plan  of  growth  of  a  tree.  A 
crystal  cannot  overstep  the  laws  of  its  form,  nor  can  a  tree  grow 
up  into  heaven ;  the  particles  of  the  crystal  aggregate  after  a 
certain  definite  plan,  and  thus  strictly  manifest  design.  Are  we, 
then,  to  assume  that,  because  of  the  design,  there  is  conscious- 
ness in  the  forming  crystal  or  the  growing  tree  ?  Certainly  not ; 
and  yet  it  is  to  such  extreme  conclusion  that  the  arguments  of 
those  who  look  upon  the  so-called  design  of  an  act  as  testifying 
to  consciousness  logically  lead.  The  design  of  an  act  is  nothing 
else  but  the  correlate  in  the  mind  of  the  observer  of  the  law  of 
the  matter  in  nature ;  and  each  observer  will  see  in  any  event 
exactly  that  amount  of  design  which  he  brings  with  him  the 
faculty  of  seeing. 

Much  fruitless  theory  would  have  been  avoided  if  the  real 
nature  of  design  had  been  kept  distinctly  in  mind.  The  notion 
that  the  soul  works  unconsciously  in  the  building  up  of  the 
organism,  which  has  at  different  times  been  so  much  in  fashion, 
rests  entirely  upon  the  assumption  that  an  intelligent  principle 
or  agent  must  be  immanent  in  organic  matter  which  is  going 
through  certain  definite  changes.  But  if  in  the  formation  of  an 
organ,  why  not  also  in  the  formation  of  a  chemical  compound 
with  its  definite  properties  ?  The  function  is  the  necessary  result 
of  a  certain  definite  organic  structure  under  certain  conditions, 
and  in  that  sense  must  needs  minister  to  the  furtherance  of  its 
well-being.  But  an  organic  action,  with  never  so  beautifully 
manifest  a  design,  may,  under  changed  conditions,  become  as 
disastrous  as  it  is  usually  beneficial ;  the  peristaltic  movements 
of  the  intestines,  which  serve  so  essential  a  purpose  in  the 
economy,  may,  and  actually  do,  in  the  case  of  some  obstruction, 
6 


66  TH2  SPINAL  CORD ;  OR,  [CHAP. 

become  the  cause  of  intolerable  suffering  and  a  painful  death. 
Where,  then,  is  the  design  of  their  disastrous  continuance  ?  What- 
ever design  we  recognise  is  really  an  idea  that  is  gradually  formed 
in  our  minds  from  repeated  experiences  of  the  law  of  the  matter. 
Any  other  kind  of  design  can  exist  only  in  the  creative  mind  ; 
and  into  such  questions  science  cannot  enter.  Those  who  would 
rashly  venture  to  do  so  might  call  to  mind  and  weigh  the  sagacious 
rerriark  of  Spinoza,  that  the  idea  of  a  perfect  God  is  incompatible 
with  the  conception  of  such  working  after  an  aim,  "  because  God 
would  then  desire  something  which  He  was  without." 

It  will  not  be  amiss  to  take  note  here  of  the  very  different 
way  in  which  we  are  in  the  habit  of  regarding  dead  matter  and 
living  matter.  In  dead  matter  the  form  is  looked  upon  as  the 
attribute  of  the  matter,  whereas,  on  the  other  hand,  in  living 
bodies  the  matter  is  treated  as  the  attribute  of  the  form :  in 
inorganic  nature  the  matter  is  the  essential  thing,  in  the  organic 
creation  the  form  is  all  in  all.  But  to  neglect  the  exact  con- 
sideration of  the  conditions  and  combinations  of  matter,  as 
determining  organic  form,  is  not  less  mischievous  than  it  is  to 
concentrate  all  attention  upon  the  matter  in  inorganic  nature. 
What  are  inseparably  joined  together  in  nature  let  us  not  vainly 
attempt  to  put  asunder.  Mindful  of  this  maxim  we  shall  not 
be  so  much  tempted  to  fall  back  upon  that  vague  and  shifting 
doctrine  of  final  causes  which  has  done  so  great  harm  in  science, 
or,  as  Bacon  has  it,  has  strangely  defiled  philosophy,  and  which, 
though  often  rejected  absolutely,  and  now  banished  from  the 
more  advanced  sciences,  still  works  injuriously  in  biology,  where 
so  much  is  yet  recondite  and  obscure.  (2)  The  human  under- 
standing can  indeed  best  impose  its  own  rules  on  nature  there 
where  the  truth  is  most  inaccessible  and  least  known.  Not  only 
does  it  in  biology  look  for  a  final  cause  answering  to  its  own 
measure,  but,  having  found  this,  or  created  it,  proceeds  straight- 
way to  superadd  its  own  attribute  of  consciousness,  so  that, 
wherever  evidence  of  design  is  met  with,  be  it  only  in  the 
function  of  the  spinal  cord  of  a  decapitated  frog,  there  consci- 
ousness is  assumed.  Is  it  not  truly  a  marvel  that  some  teleologist 
has  not  yet  been  found  to  maintain  that  the  final  cause  of  the 
moon  is  to  act  as 'a  "tug"  to  the  vessels  on  our  tidal  rivers  ? 

There  can  be  no  difficulty  in  admitting  that  the  spinal  cord  is 


in.]  TERTIARY  NERVOUS  CENTRES,  ETC.  67 

an  independent  centre  of  so-called  aim-working  acts  that  are  not 
attended  with  consciousness.  It  is  the  centre,  however,  not  only 
of  co-ordinate  action  the  capability  of  which  has  been  implanted 
in  its  original  constitution,  but  also  of  co-ordinate  action  the 
power  of  which  has  been  gradually  acquired  and  matured 
through  individual  experience.  Like  the  brain,  the  spinal  cord 
has,  so  to  speak,  its  memory :  the  reaction  which  it  displays, 
in  consequence  of  a  particular  impression  conveyed  to  it  from 
without,  does  not  vanish  issueless,  leaving  the  ganglionic  cells 
nnmodi6ed  after  its  force  has  been  expended.  With  the  display 
of  energy  there  is  a  coincident  change  or  waste  of  nervous 
element ;  and,  although  a  subsequent  regeneration  or  restoration 
of  the  statical  equilibrium  by  the  quiet  process  of  nutrition  takes 
place,  yet  the  nutritive  repair,  replacing  the  loss  which  has  been 
made,  must  plainly  take  the  form  or  -pattern  created  by  the 
energy  and  coincident  material  change.  Thereby  the  definite 
activity  is  to  some  extent  realized  or  embodied  in  the  structure 
of  the  spinal  cord,  existing  there  for  the  future  as  a  motor 
residuum,  or  as,  so  to  speak,  a  potential  or  abstract  movement ; 
and  accordingly  there  is  a  tendency  to  the  recurrence  of  the  par- 
ticular activity — a  tendency  which  becomes  stronger  with  every 
repetition  of  it.  Every  impression  which  is  made  leaves  behind 
it,  therefore,  its  trace  or  residuum,  which  is  again  quickened 
into  activity  on  the  occasion  of  an  appropriate  stimulus  :  the 
faculties  of  the  spinal  cord  are  thus  gradually  formed  and  matured. 
When  a  series  or  group  of  movements  are,  after  many  voluntary 
efforts,  associated,  they  notably  become  more  and  more  easy,  and 
less  and  less  separable,  with  every  repetition,  until  at  last  they 
are  firmly  fixed  in  the  constitution  of  the  cord,  become  a  part  of 
the  faculty  of  it,  and  may  be  accomplished  without  effort  or  even 
without  consciousness  :  they  are  the  secondary  or  acquired  auto- 
matic acts,  as  described  by  Hartley. (3)  In  this  way  walking  be- 
comes so  far  a  reflex  or  automatic  act  that  a  man  in  a  profound 
abstraction  may  continue  to  walk  without  being  conscious  where 
he  is  going,  and  find  himself,  when  he  wakes  from  his  reverie, 
in  a  different  place  from  that  which  he  intended  to  visit.  In 
that  form  of  epilepsy  known  as  the  petit  mal,  an  individual 
sometimes  continues  automatically,  whilst  consciousness  is  quite 
abolished,  the  act  which  he  was  engaged  in  when  the  attack 


68  THE  SPINAL  CORD;  OR,  [CHAP. 

seized  him  :  a  shoemaker  used  frequently  to  wound  his  fingers 
with  the  awl  as  he  went  on  with  his  work  during  the  attack, 
and  on  one  occasion  walked  into  a  pond  of  water  during  the 
suspension  of  consciousness ;  and  a  woman  whom  Schroeder 
van  der  Kolk  knew,  continued  eating  or  drinking,  or  the  occu- 
pation she  was  about,  being  quite  unconscious  on  recovery  of 
what  had  happened.  In  fact,  if  we  attend  to  our  ordinary 
actions  during  the  day,  it  will  be  surprising  how  small  a  pro- 
portion of  them  are  consciously  willed,  how  large  a  proportion 
of  them  are  the  results  of  the  acquired  automatic  action  of  the 
organism.  It  is  most  certain  that  the  faculties  of  the  spinal 
cord  are,  for  the  most  part,  not  inborn  in  man,  but  are  gradually 
built  Tip  by  virtue  of  experience  and  education ;  in  their  forma- 
tion they  illustrate  the  progress  of  human  adaptation  to  external 
nature. 

It  is  true  that  the  capability  of  certain  associated  voluntary 
movements,  or  the  germ  of  such  capability,  does  appear  to  exist 
as  an  innate  endowment  of  the  spinal  cord  even  in  man,  whilst 
in  the  lower  animals  it  is  very  evident.  As  the  young  animal, 
directly  it  is  born,  can  sometimes  use  its  limbs  with  complete 
effect,  or  as  the  infant,  previous  to  any  experience,  is  capable  of 
that  association  or  catenation  of  movements  necessary  to  crying, 
breathing,  or  coughing,  so  likewise  does  there  appear  to  be,  as 
Mr.  Bain  argues,*  the  germ  of  a  locomotive  harmony  in  the 
original  conformation  of  the  nervous  centres  of  man.  Not  only 
does  the  analogy  of  the  lower  animals  favour  the  original  exist- 
ence of  such  an  associating  link,  but  the  tendency  to  an  alternate 
action  of  the  lower  limbs,  and  of  the  two  sides  of  the  body, 
observably  precedes  any  acquisition  of  experience.  There  is, 
furthermore,  a  great  proneness  to  the  involuntary  association  of 
the  motions  of  corresponding  parts  of  the  two  sides  of  the  body  ; 
and,  as  Miiller  has  observed,  the  less  perfect  the  action  of  the 
nervous  system  in  man,  or  the  less  developed  volition  is,  the 

*  The  Senses  and  the  Intellect,  2d  ed.  It  has  long  been  distinctly  recognised 
as  a  general  law  that  when  a  moderate  stimulus  excites  several  motor  nerves, 
these  are  physiologically  connected ;  first,  inasmuch  as  all  the  fibres  going  to  a 
particular  muscle  are  simultaneously  excited,  so  that  pai-tial  movement  of  the 
muscle  does  not  take  place  ;  secondly,  as  the  regular  reflex  activity  implicates 
such  muscles  as  are  functionally  co-ordinated,  the  associated  action  of  which 
produces  certain  physiological  effects — e.g.  coughing,  sneezing. 


in.]  TERTIARY  NERVOUS  CENTRES,  ETC.  QQ 

more  general  are  the  associate  movements.  It  would  be  a 
fruitless  task,  however,  to  attempt  to  fix  the ,  value  of  this  pre- 
established  arrangement  in  man,  where  it  is  obviously  rather 
a  potentiality  than  an  actuality ;  and,  for  all  practical  purposes, 
we  must  view  the  faculties  of  his  spinal  cord  as  acquired.  The 
child  certainly  has  the  capability  of  learning  to  walk,  but  the 
actual  process  of  learning  involves  the  expenditure  of  much 
time  and  energy,  and  represents  a  progressing  development  of 
the  spinal  cord :  it  is  the  faculty  thereof  in  the  making.  Of 
course  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  spinal  centres  of  them- 
selves ordinarily  suffice  for  all  the  complicated  movements  of 
walking,  although  they  may  do  so  :  all  that  is  claimed  is,  that 
they  are  the  automatic  centres  of  certain  associate  movements, 
which  have  been  acquired,  and  which  constitute  a  large  part  of 
our  daily  action.* 

This  power  of  co-ordinate  action,  which  the  spinal  centres 
acquire  by  assimilation  of  the  influence  of  the  individual's 
surroundings  and  respondent  reaction  thereto,  is  plainly  a  most 
useful,  as  it  is  a  most  necessary,  provision  of  nature.  For  if 
an  act  became  no  easier  after  being  done  several  times,  if  the 
careful  direction  of  consciousness  were  necessary  on  every  occa- 
sion to  its  accomplishment,  it  is  evident  that  the  whole  activity 
of  a  lifetime  might  be  confined  to  one  or  two  deeds — that  no 
progress  could  take  place  in  development.  A  man  might  be 
occupied  all  day  in  dressing  and  undressing  himself;  the 
washing  of  his  hands  or  the  fastening  of  a  button  would  be  as 
difficult  to  him  on  each  occasion  as  to  the  child  on  its  first 
trial ;  and  he  would  furthermore  be  completely  exhausted  by 
his  exertions.  For  while  secondary  automatic  acts  are  accom- 
plished with  comparatively  little  weariness — in  this  regard 

*  Schroeder  van  der  Kolk,  after  saying  that  the  production  of  harmonized 
movement  is  due  to  the  ultimate  connexion  of  certain  groups  of  ganglionic  cells 
in  the  epinal  cord,  goes  on  to  say — "It  has  always  been  incomprehensible  to  me, 
how  any  one  could  ever  have  referred  it  (co-ordination)  to  the  cerebellum.  If  the 
cause  of  this  co-ordination  lay  in  the  cerebellum,  no  horizontal  reflex  movements 
could  take  place  in  a  decapitated  frog." — On  ilie.  Minute  Structure  of  Spinal  Cord 
and  Medulla  Oblongata,  p.  72.  The  supposition  that  the  cerebellum  is  the 
centre  of  co-ordination  is  now,  in  fact,  abandoned  as  untenable.  There  never  was 
any  real  scientific  evidence  to  support  it,  while  there  was  positive  evidence 
against  it. — See  Vermeil  einer  Physiologischen  Pathologic  der  Nerven,  von  G. 
Valentin,  1864,  vol.  ii.  p.  68. 


70  THE  SPINAL  CORD;  Oil,  [CHAP. 

approaching  the  organic  movements,  or  the  original  reflex  move- 
ments— the  conscious  efforts  of  the  will  soon  produce  exhaus- 
tion. A  spinal  cord  without  memory  would  simply  be  an 
idiotic  spinal  cord  incapable  of  culture — a  degenerate  nervous 
centre  in  which  the  organization  of  special  faculties  could  not 
take  place.  It  is  the  lesson  of  a  good  education  so  consciously 
to  exercise  it  in  reference  to  its  surroundings  that  it  shall  act 
automatically,  in  accordance  with  the  relations  of  the  individual 
in  his  particular  walk  of  life. 

The  phenomena  of  secondary  automatic  action  may  well  serve 
to  exhibit  the  true  mode  of  origin  and  the  nature  of  what  we  call 
design.  It  is  here  observably  an  acquisition  that  is  gradually 
organized  in  respondence  to  particular  experience,  and,  represent- 
ing as  it  does  the  acquired  nature  of  nervous  element,  its  mani- 
festation is  the  simple  result  of  the  constitution  of  the  material 
substratum,  just  as  the  properties  of  any  chemical  element  are 
the  unavoidable  result  of  its  nature.  That  means  are  adapted  to 
the  production  of  an  end  in  the  phenomena  of  life,  is  but  another 
way  of  saying  that  what  we  please  to  call  life  exists ;  for  if 
means  were  not  adapted  to  an  end  there  could  plainly  be  no 
end  ;  and  if  we  choose  to  assume  a  certain  result  to  be  the  end 
of  certain  means,  then  we  are  but  saying  that  certain  things  have, 
according  to  our  experience,  certain  definite  properties.  In  the 
building  up  of  the  secondary  automatic  faculties  of  the  spinal 
centres,  we  are  thus  able  to  trace  through  the  course  of  its  forma- 
tion in  individual  life  that  design  which  we  meet  with  fully 
formed  in  the  innate  faculties  of  so  many  animals ;  but  which 
even  in  that  case  has,  as  we  shall  hereafter  see,  been  gradually 
organized  through  generations.  If  it  be  said  that  the  gradual 
building  up  of  this  embodied  design  into  the  constitution  of  the 
nervous  centres  is  itself  an  evidence  of  design,  then  we  can  only 
answer,  that  such  proposition  is  merely  a  statement  in  other 
words  of  the  fact  that  things  do  exist  as  they  do,  and  add  the 
expression  of  a  conviction  that  science  cannot  enter  into  the 
councils  of  creation.  If  that  is  not  satisfactory  to  the  teleologists,, 
it  will  be  sufficient  to  recall  to  them  the  already  given  observation 
of  Spinoza,  and  to  congratulate  them  on  their  power  of  diving 
into  "  the  mysteries  of  things  as  if  they  were  God's  spies."  Were 
it  not  well,  however,  that  they  should  condescend  to  humble 


in.]  TERTIARY  NERFOUS  CENTRES,  ETC.  J\ 

tlmips,  and  unfold  to  us,  for  example,  the  final  cause  of  the 
mammary  gland  and  nipple  in  the  male  animal  ? 

As  the  faculties  of  the  spinal  cord  are  built  up  Ly  organiza- 
tion, so  must  they  be  kept  up  by  due  nutrition.  If  not  so 
preserved  in  vigour,  if  exhausted  by  excesses  of  any  kind,  the 
ill  effects  are  manifest  in  degenerate  action ;  instead  of  definite 
co-ordinate  action  ministering  to  the  well-being  of  the  individual, 
there  ensue  irregular  spasmodic  or  convulsive  movements,  which, 
though  inevitable  consequences  of  the  degenerate  condition  of 
the  nervous  centres,  serve  no  good  end,  but  have  quite  lost  their 
beneficial  design.*  Mr.  Paget  has  rendered  it  extremely  probable 
that  the  rhythmical  organic  movements,  such  as  those  of  the 
heart,  of  respiration,  of  the  cilia,  are  due  to  a  rhythmical  nutri- 
tion ;  that  is,  "  a  method  of  nutrition  in.  which  the  acting  parts 
are,  at  certain  periods,  raised,  with  time-regulated  progress,  to  a 
state  of  instability  of  composition,  from  which  they  then  decline, 
and  in  their  decline  discharge  nerve-force."  f  It  is  intelligible, 
therefore,  why  they  are  never  tired  when  acting  naturally ; 
between  every  act  a  repair  of  composition  takes  place,  and  the 
time  of  each  occurrence  of  the  movement  represents  the  time- 
rate  of  nutrition.  But  the  spinal  centres  are  equally  dependent 
on  nutrition  for  the  maintenance  of  their  functions ;  the  struc- 
tural or  chemical  change  produced  by  the  .ordinary  activity  of 
the  day  must  be  repaired  during  a  period  of  cessation  of  action. 
This  restoration  most  likely  takes  place  during  sleep ;  and  there 
is  some  reason  to  believe  that  the  periodical  action  of  the  spinal 
centres  is,  like  rhythmical  organic  movement,  dependent  upon 
or  closely  related  to,  the  time-rate  of  nutrition.  The  unconscious 
quiet  manner  in  which  the  automatic  action  of  the  spinal  centres 
is  performed,  though  in  one  way  or  another  the  work  is  con- 
tinuous during  waking,  might  seem  at  first  sight  to  render  no 
cessation  of  action  necessary ;  but  a  little  reflection  shows  that 
here,  as  elsewhere,  the  expenditure  of  force  must  be  balanced  by 
a  corresponding  supply.  If  no  rest  be  allowed,  the  exhaustion 
is  evinced,  first,  in  an  inability  to  accomplish  successfully  the 

*  They  have,  no  doubt,  their  design  quite  as  much  as  the  healthy  movements, 
in  so  far  as  they  accomplish  what  they  cannot  help  doing,  their  destiny— in  other 
words,  fulfil  the  law  which  necessitates  them. 

t  Croonian  Lecture  hefore  the  Royal  Society,  1857. 


72  THE  SPINAL  CORD ;  OR,  [CHAP. 

most  delicate  or  complex  acquired  associate  movements — in  a 
loss,  that  is,  of  design ;  then  in  trembling  incapacity,  which,  if 
the  degeneration  increases,  may  pass  on  to  actual  spasmodic 
movement.  Therein  we  have  sure  evidence  that  the  constitution 
of  the  nerv ous  element  has  suffered  from  the  drain  of  activity. 

A  reflection  which  occurs,  in  considering  the  organic  mechan- 
ism by.  which  the  action  and  reaction  between  the  individual  and 
nature  take  place,  is  as  to  the  disproportionate  exhibition  of 
force  by  the  organism  to  the  force  of  the  simple  impression  which 
may  happen  to  be  made  upon  it.  How,  with  due  regard  to  the 
principle  of  the  conservation  of  force,  do  we  account  for  this 
seeming  generation  of  energy?  In  the  first  place,  the  central 
ganglionic  cell  is  not  a  simple  impassive  body,  which  merely 
reflects  or  passes  onwards  a  received  current  of  activity,  without 
affecting  it  or  being  affected  by  it:  on  the  contrary,  it  is  the 
complexly  constituted,  supremely  endowed  centre  in  which  force 
is  released  or  evolved  on  the  occasion  of  a  suitable  stimulus  ;  and 
that  which  is  perceived,  as  it  were,  in  the  spinal  cord  is  not  the 
actual  impression  made  upon  the  afferent  nerve,  but  it  is  the 
effect  produced  in  the  particular  central  nervous  cell  or  cells. 
Is  it  not  plain  enough  how  this  force  or  energy  is  evolved,  or,  as 
it  were,  unfolded  in  the  cell  ?  By  the  disturbance  of  the  statical 
equilibrium  of  an  intensely  vital  structure ;  by  a  change  of  the 
material  into  lower  kinds,  or  a  degeneration  of  it,  and  a  correla- 
tive resolution  of  its  force  into  lower  modes  and  larger  volu- 
metrical  display.  There  is  not  any  actual  generation  of  force, 
but  only  a  transformation  of  the  high  quality-  of  latent  force 
which  the  nervous  monad  inplies  into  actual  force  of  a  lower 
quality  and  larger  display.  Consider  what  has  been  previously 
said  as  to  the  nature  of  nervous  element  and  its  position  in  the 
universe :  it  will  then  be  sufficiently  evident  what  manner  of 
process  it  is  that  takes  place.  Slowly  and,  as  it  were,  laboriously, 
by  a  steady  appropriation  and  ascent  through  many  gradations 
of  vitality,  does  organic  element  arrive  at  the  complex  and 
supreme  nature  of  nervous  element ;  quickly  and  easily  does 
nervous  element  give  back  force  and  matter  to  nature,  in  the  rapid 
resolution  which  the  accomplishment  of  its  function  implies. 

Thus  much  on  the  inherent  force  of  the  spinal  cord  as  a 
nervous  centre.  In  the  second  place,  bear  in  mind  the  nature  of 


in.]  TERTIARY  NERFOUS  CENTRES,  ETC.  73 

its  acquired  faculties,  and  the  great  expenditure  of  force  made 
upon  its  education.  In  the  registration  of  impressions  made 
upon  it,  in  the  assimilation  of  their  residua,  there  is  slowly 
embodied  a  quantity  of  energy  as  an  organic  addition  of  power 
to  it ;  force  is  being  stored  up  in  the  gradual  organization  of  its 
faculties.  The  exhaustion  which  we  feel  from  our  efforts  to 
acquire  any  particular  skill  of  movements,  as  in  learning  to 
dance,  the  labour  given  to  the  frequent  voluntary  repetition  of 
the  stimulus  and  adapted  reaction  thereto,  until  by  practice  the 
definite  relation  has  been  established,  and  the  desired  skill 
acquired ; — these  testify  to  the  expenditure  of  so  much  force 
which  has  been  laid  up  as  statical  power  in  the  constitution  of 
the  ganglionic  cells  of  the  cord,  and  for  the  future  renders 
possible  a  group  of  associated  movements  in  answer  to  a  mode- 
rate, and,  as  might  often  seem,  disproportionate  stimulus  from 
without.  Like  the  brain,  the  spinal  corjd  lays  up  good  store  of 
power  in  its  memory.  Man's  life  truly  represents  a  progressive 
development  of  the  nervous  system,  none  the  less  so  because  it 
takes  place  out  of  the  womb  instead  of  in  it.  The  regular  trans- 
mutation of  motions  which  are  at  first  voluntary  into  secondary 
automatic  motions,  as  Hartley  calls  them,  is  due  to  a  gradually 
effected  organization ;  and  we  may  rest  assured  of  this,  that 
co-ordinate  activity  always  testifies  to  stored-up  power,  either 
innate  or  acquired. 

The  way  in  which  an  acquired  faculty  of  the  parent  animal  is 
sometimes  distinctly  transmitted  to  the  progeny  as  a  heritage, 
instinct,  or  innate  endowment,  furnishes  a  striking  confirmation 
of  the  foregoing  observations.  Power  which  has  been  laboriouslv 

O  O  v 

acquired  and  stored  up  as  statical  in  one  generation  manifestly 
in  such  case  becomes  the  inborn  faculty  of  the  next ;  and  the 
development  takes  place  in  accordance  with  that  law  of  increasing 
speciality  and  complexity  of  adaptation  to  external  nature  which 
is  traceable  through  the  animal  kingdom,  or,  in  other  words,  that 
law  of  progress  from  the  general  to  the  special  in  development 
which  the  appearance  of  nerve  force  amongst  natural  forces  arid 
the  complexity  of  the  nervous  system  of  man  both  illustrate.  As 
the  vital  force  gathers  up,  as  it  were,  iuto  itself  inferior  forces, 
and  might  be  said  to  be  a  development  of  them,  or,  as  in  the 
appearance  of  nerve  force,  simpler  and  more  general  forces  are 


74  THE  SPINAL  CORD ;  OR,  [CHAP. 

gathered  up  and  concentrated  in  a  more  special  and  complex 
mode  of  energy  ;  so  again  a  further  specialization  takes  place  in 
the  development  of  the  nervous  system,  whether  watched  through 
generations  or  through  individual  life.  It  is  not  by  limiting  our 
observation  to  the  life  of  the  individual,  however,  who  is  but  a 
link  in  the  chain  of  organic  beings  connecting  the  past  with  the 
future,  that  we  shall  come  at  the  full  tmtli ;  the  present  indi- 
vidual is  the  inevitable  consequence  of  his  antecedents  in 
the  past,  and  in  the  examination  of  these  alone  do  we  arrive  at 
the  adequate  explanation  of  him.  It  behoves  us,  then,  having 
found  any  faculty  to  be  innate,  not  to  rest  content  there,  but 
steadily  to  follow  backwards  the  line  of  causatiorf,  and  thus  to 
display,  if  possible,  its  manner  of  origin.  This  is  the  more 
necessary  with  the  lower  animals,  where  so  much  is  innate. 

And  now,  having  done  with  the  general  functions  of  the  spinal 
cord  as  an  independent  nervous  centre  ministering  to  the  animal 
life,  let  us  add  that  these  were  distinctly  recognised  by  the 
physiologist  long  before  the  anatomist  was  in  a  condition  to  give 
the  physical  explanation.  It  is  only  recently  that  the  nerve- 
fibres  which  pass  to  or  from  the  cord  have  been  proved  to  be 
connected  with  the  multipolar  cells  of  its  grey  substance ;  and 
this  so  plainly  as  to  justify  the  belief  that  an  isolated  apolar 
nervous  cell  does  not  exist  in  the  spinal  cord  or  brain.  For 
the  conveyance  of  an  impression  .to  the  grey  centres,  and  for  the 
passage  of  the  reacting  force  outwards,  there  is  thus  revealed  a 
definite  physical  path,  along  which  the  current  of  activity  travels. 
From  the  cells  with  which  nerves  are  connected,  again,  other 
processes  go  to  join  neighbouring  cells,  and  thus,  forming  a  con- 
necting path  between  them,  enable  them  to  act  together  :  hun- 
dreds of  ganglionic  cells  are  yoked  together  by  such  anastomoses, 
and,  functionally  co-ordinated  thereby,  represent  the  centres  of 
innervation  of  corresponding  systems  of  motor  nerves.  By 
similar  anastomoses  the  gauglionic  cells  of  different  nervous 
centres  are  connected,  and  thus  a  means  is  afforded  for  the  com- 
munication of  the  activity  of  one  centre  to  another.  Many, 
therefore,  are  the  channels  by  which  the  activity  excited  in  the 
nerve-cell  by  the  stimulus  of  the  afferent  nerve  may  be  disposed 
of :  it  may  at  once  be  reflected  on  to  an  efferent  nerve,  and  pass 
into  muscular  motion ;  or  it  may  pass  to  other  interconnected 


in.]  TERTIARY  NERVOUS  CENTRES,  ETC.  75 

cells,  and,  acting  thus  upon  a  system  of  nerves,  produce  asso- 
ciated movements,  either  such  as  proceed  from  the  cord  nearly 
on  the  same  level  as  the  afferent  nerve  enters,  or  such  as  proceed 
from  a  different  level;  or,  lastly,  it  may  pass  upwards,  and 
excite  the  higher  functionally  co-ordinated  centres. 

To  Pfliiger  belongs  the  merit  of  having  attempted  to  syste- 
matise the  laws  of  the  reflex  movements.  They  are  : — 1.  The 
laiv  of  simultaneous  conduction  for  one-sided  reflex  movements. 
When  a  reflex  movement  takes  place  only  on  one  side  of  the 
body  in  consequence  of  a  stimulus,  it  is  always  on  the  same 
side  of  the  body  as  the  irritation  of  the  afferent  nerve;  the 
reason  being  probably  that  the  motor  nerves  proceed  from 
ganglionic  cells  which  are  in  direct  connexion  with  the  stimu- 
lated afferent  nerves.  2.  The  law  of  symmetry  of  reflex  action. 
When  a  stimulus  has  produced  reflex  movements  on  one  side, 
and  its  continuance  or  its  further  extension  in  the  spinal  cord 
produces  movements  of  the  opposite  side,  then  the  corresponding 
muscles  only  of  this  side  are  affected.  This  is  owing  no  doubt 
to  the  commissural  system,  which  connects  together  the  eorre 
spending  ganglionic  cells  of  the  two  halves  of  the  cord.  3.-  The 
unequally  intense  reflex  action  of  the  tivo  sides  in  the  event  of 
both  being  affected.  When  the  reflex  action  is  stronger  on  one 
side  than  upon  the  other,  the  stronger  movements  take  place 
upon  the  side  of  the  irritation.  4.  The  law  of  irradiation  of 
reflex  action,  by  which  an  extension  of  reflex  action  takes  place 
from  the  nerves  in  which  it  first  appears  to  neighbouring  ones, 
owing  to  the  communications  between  the  different  systems  or 
groups  of  ganglionic  cells.  When  the  excitation  of  an  afferent 
cerebral  nerve  is  transferred  to  motor  nerves,  we  observe  that 
the  roots  of  both  sorts  of  nerves  are  placed  nearly  upon  the 
same  level  in  the  central  organ,  or  that  the  motor  nerve  lies 
a  little  behind  or  below,  never  in  front  of  or  above,  the  afferent 
nerve.  If  the  reflex  action  spreads  further,  the  way  of  irra- 
diation is  downwards  to  the  medulla  oblongata ;  stimulation  of 
the  optic,  for  example,  produces  contraction  of  the  iris.  In  the 
spinal  cord  the  primarily-affected  motor  nerve  lies  nearly  on 
the  level  of  the  stimulated  sensory  nerve.  But  if  the  reflex 
action  spreads,  then  it  passes  upwards  towards  the  medulla. 
When  the  irritation  has  arrived  at  the  medulla,  then  it  may 


76  THE  SPINAL  CORD ;  OR,  [CHAP. 

pass  downwards  again.  5.  The  reflex  action  produced  by  the 
irritation  of  a  sensory  nerve  can  only  appear  in  three  places, 
whether  one-sided  or  occurring  on  both  sides  of  the  body,  (a)  It 
appears  in  the  motor  nerves  which  lie  nearly  on  the  same  level 
with  the  excited  sensory  nerve.  (&)  If  reflex  action  implicates 
the  motor  nerves  on  a  different  level,  these  motor  nerves  are 
constantly  such  as  spring  from  the  medulla  oblongata :  tetanus 
and  hysterical  convulsions,  in  consequence  of  local  irritations, 
furnish  examples,  (c)  The  reflex  action  affects  the  muscles  of 
the  body  generally ;  the  principal  focus  of  irradiation  thereof 
being  the  medulla  oblongata. 

I  proceed  next  to  indicate  briefly  the  causes  which  affect  the 
functional  activity  of  the  spinal  cord  : — 

1.  As  an  original  fact,  the  ganglionic  cells  may  have  a  greater 
or  less  stability  of  composition.  It  sometimes  happens  that  a 
child  is  born  with  so  great  a  natural  instability  of  nervous 
element,  that  on  the  occasion  of  very  slight  irritation  the  most 
violent  convulsions  ensue.  Or  the  evil  may  be  less  serious, 
and  the  individual  may  be  equal  to  the  ordinary  emergencies 
of  a  quiet,  favourably  spent  life  ;  but  there  is  an  absence  of 
that  reserve  power  necessary  to  meet  the  extraordinary  emer- 
gencies and  unusual  strain  of  adverse  events.  When,  therefore, 
an  unaccustomed  stress  is  laid  upon  the  feeble  nervous  element, 
it  is  unequal  to  the  demand  made  upon  it,  and  breaks  down 
into  a  rapid  degeneration.  The  most  common  cause  of  this 
innate  feebleness,  which  is  marked  by  an  excessive  irrita.bility 
and  is  truly  an  irritable  weakness,  is  an  unfortunate  inheri- 
tance, the  curse  of  a  bad  descent :  any  sort  of  disease  of  the 
nervous  system  in  the  parent  seems  to  predispose  more  or  less 
to  this  ill  condition  of  the  child,  the  acquired  deterioration  of 
its  parent  becoming  its  inborn  organic  feebleness. 

The  degeneration  of  nervous  element  in  the  ganglicnic  cells 
reveals  itself  in  a  disturbance  of  the  co-ordinate  or  aim- working 
activity  which,  as  we  have  already  seen,  marks  the  highest 
development  of  its  power.  Convulsions  are  the  sure  signs  of  a 
weakness  or  lowered  vitality  of  nervous  element — a  defect  which, 
though  we  cannot  yet  ascertain  its  exact  nature,  certainly 
implies  an  unstable  equilibrium  of  its  organic  constitution. 
Each  central  nervous  cell  exists  in  close  relations,  physical  and 


in.]  TERTIARY  NERFOUS  CENTRES,  ETC.  77 

physiological,  with  other  nervous  cells  ;  when,  regardless  of  these 
relations,  it  reacts  directly  outwards  on  its  own  account,  it  is  very 
much  like  an  individual  in  a  social  system  who,  by  reason 
of  madness,  is  unable  to  maintain  his  due  social  relations. 

Not  only,  however,  may  an  excess  of  irritability  be  a  defect 
in  the  -nature  of  the  ganglionic  cell,  but  it  may  be  defective  also 
by  reason  of  a  great  insensibility  of  nature  and  want  of  power 
of  assimilation.  In  congenital  idiots  the  central  cells  of  the 
cord  do  plainly,  sometimes  partake  of  the  degeneracy  of  the 
brain,  and  are  idiotic  also ;  they  are  incapable  of  receiving 
impressions  with  any  vividness,  and  of  retaining  the  traces  or 
residua  of  such  as  they  do  receive.  Spasms  of  the  limbs,  some- 
times limited  to  the  toe,  to  one  arm  or  leg,  at  other  times  more 
general ;  contractions  of  a  foot,  or  of  the  knees  to  such  degree 
as  to  make  the  heels  touch  the  buttocks  ;  more  frequent  still, 
paralytic  conditions  of  varying  degree  and  extent ;  atrophied 
limbs,  now  and  then  indulging  in  convulsive  movement ; — all 
these  morbid  states  are  met  with  in  idiots,  and,  though  in  part 
attributable  to  the  brain,  are  certainly  in  part  due  to  degene- 
ration of  a  spinal  cord  utterly  oblivious  of  its  design  or  final 
purpose  in  the  universe.  In  some  cases,  in  which  the  morbid 
degeneration  is  not  so  extreme,  it  is  still  not  impossible  to 
teach  such  combinations  of  movements  as  are  necessary  for  the 
common  work  of  life.  It  may  be  observed  incidentally,  however, 
that  the  easy  and  rapid  way  in  which  those  idiots  who  have  by 
perseverance  been  taught  difficult  feats  of  action — the  machine- 
like  exactness  and  ease  of  their  movements — serves  to  display 
the  important  functions  of  the  spinal  cord  as  an  independent 
nervous  centre,  in  a  case  in  which  the  influence  of  the  cerebral 
hemispheres  is  almost  excluded. 

2.  The  functional  action  of  the  spinal  ganglionic  ceils  may 
suffer  from  the  too  powerful  or  prolonged  action  of  an  external 
stimulus,  or  from  an  activity  continued  without  due  interval 
of  rest.  The  molecular  degeneration  or  waste,  which  is  the 
condition  of  functional  activity,  must  be  repaired  by  rest  and 
nutrition;  the  nerve  cell. is  no  inexhaustible  fountain  of  force, 
but  must  take  in  from  one  quarter  what  it  gives  out  in  another  • 
and,  if  due  time  be  not  allowed  for  the  development  of  its  highly 
vital  structure  by  assimilation  of  matter  of  a  lower  quality,  it  is 


78  THE  SPINAL  CORD;  OR,  [CHAP. 

certain  that,  not-withstanding  the  best  innate  constitution,  de- 
terioration must  ensue  as  surely  as  a  fuelless  fire  must  go  out. 
In  that  degeneration  of  the  spinal  cord  which  sometimes  occurs 
in  consequence  of  masturbation  or  great  venereal  excess,  one  of 
the  first  symptoms  is  a  loss  of  co-ordinating  power  over  the 
motions  of  the  legs — a  loss,  in  other  words,  of  that  which  is  the 
last  organized  faculty  of  the  spinal  centre.  The  startings  of  the 
limbs,  and  the  partial  contractions  of  certain  muscles  which 
may  follow,  do  not  evince  increased  power,  as  some  have  heed- 
lessly fancied,  but  are  the  incoherent  manifestations  of  a  de- 
generate instability  of  nerve  element.  When  such  a  morbid 
condition  of  things  is  brought  about,  there  is  necessarily  a 
failure  in  the  power  of  the  ganglionic  cells  to  receive  and 
assimilate  impressions  :  hence  it  is  that  in  general  paralytics, 
in  whom  the  memory  of  each  independent  nervous  centre  is 
decayed,  there  is  not  only  an  inability  to  accomplish  success- 
fully the  actions  to  which  they  have  been  accustomed — as,  for 
example,  an  inability  of  a  tailor,  whom  from  his  conversation 
one  would  deem  quite  capable  of  his  work,  to  sew ;  but  there 
is  also  the  impossibility  of  teaching  them  new  combinations  of 
movements.  In  other  sorts  of  lunatics  this  is  often  possible  : 
though  mentally  much  degenerate,  and  actually  lost  for  ever  to 
the  world,  they  may  by  persevering  training  be  made  useful  in 
certain  simple  relations  to  which  they  grow  and  react  as  auto- 
matic machines,  their  own  cerebral  hemispheres  not  interfering ; 
the  general  paralytics,  in  whom  the  disease  has  advanced  so 
far  as  to  affect  the  cord,  cannot  thus  be  utilized. 

3.  The  supply  of  blood  and  the  condition  of  it  are  manifestly 
of  the  greatest  consequence  to  the  welfare  of  the  spinal  cells. 
The  grey  matter  of  the  cord  is  very  richly  supplied  with  capil- 
laries, to  the  end  that  there  may  be  a  quick  renewal  of  blood 
ministering  to  the  active  interchange  that  goes  on  between  the 
ganglionic  cell  and  the  nutrient  fluid  ;  the  enormous  expenditure 
of  force  implied  in  nervous  function  demands  such  an  abundance 
of  supply.  When  the  supply  of  blood  is  suddenly  cut  off,  as  in 
the  well-known  experiments  of  Stannius,  Brown-Se"quard,  and 
Schiff,  the  nervous  activity  is  presently  paralysed,  and  rigor 
mortis  of  the  muscles  ensues.  When  the  supply  of  blood  is 
soon  restored  to  a  part  in  which  rigor  mortis  has  taken  place,. 


in.]  TERTIARY  NERFOUS  CENTRES,  ETC:  79 

as  in  Brown- Sequard's  experiment  of  injecting  warm  blood 
into  the  stiffened  arm  of  an  executed  criminal,  the  muscles 
presently  regaiii  their  contractility,  and  the  nerves  their  irrita- 
bility. As  a  complete  cutting-off  of  the  blood  is  paralysis  of 
nerve  element,  so  a  deficiency  of  blood,  or  of  material  in  it  fitted 
for  the  nutrition  of  nerve,  is  to  the  extent  of  its  existence  a  cause 
of  degeneration  or  instability  of  nerve  element :  such  deteriora- 
tion is  exhibited  by  cachetic  and  anaemic  persons  in  a  great 
irritability,  and  in  a  disposition  to  spasms  or  convulsions — an 
acquired  condition  not  unlike  that  which  is  sometimes  inherited. 

The  state  of  the  blood  may  be  perverted  by  reason  of  the 
presence  of  some  foreign  matter  which,  whether  bred  in  it  or 
introduced  from  without,  acts  injuriously,  or  as  a  direct  poison 
on  the  individual  nervous  cells.  Strychnia  notably  so  affects 
them  that,  on  the  occasion  of  the  slightest  stimulus,  they  react 
in  convulsive  activity :  while  the  woorara  poison,  on  the  other 
hand,  produces  a  sort  of  stupor,  or  coma,  and  paralyses  all 
activity.  Opium,  which  usually  produces  coma  in  man,  produces 
convulsions  in  frogs.  We  might,  were  it  needful,  accept  these 
different  effects  of  poisons,  which  are  alike  positively  injurious 
to  the  integrity  of  nerve  element,  as  evidence  that  convulsions 
do  not  mean  strength,  are  not  the  result  of  an  increase  in  the 
proper  vital  activity  of  parts,  but  the  result  of  degenerate  vital 
action,  and  the  forerunners  of  paralysis. 

There  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  presence  of  too  much  blood 
in  the  spinal  cord  may  be  as  baneful  as  an  insufficient  supply  of 
blood.  All  the  symptoms  of  disorder  of  nerve  element  which 
accompany  anaemia  may  certainly  be  produced  also  by  con- 
gestion, or  hyperasmia.  However,  this  matter  will  be  more 
properly  and  more  fully  considered  when  we  come  to  the 
pathology  of  nerve. 

4.  The  existence  of  a  persistent  cause  of  eccentric  irritation, 
whether  the  result  of  injury  or  disease  in  some  part  of  the  body, 
may  give  rise  to  a  morbid  state  of  the  spinal  nerve-cells  by  a 
so-called  sympathetic  or  reflex  action.  The  convulsions  which 
sometimes  take  place  during  teething  in  children,  or  owing  to 
the  presence  of  worms  in  the  intestines,  are  familiar  examples  of 
such  secondary  effect  upon  a  susceptible  growing  nervous  system. 
It  is  necessary  to  distinguish  two  kinds  of  effects  of  this  reflex 


80  THE  SPINAL  CORD ;  OR,  [CHAP. 

action — or,  perhaps,  different  degrees  of  the  same  kind  of  effect — 
namely,  a  reflex  functional  modification  and  a  reflex  nutritive 
modification. 

The  irritation  of  a  decayed  tooth  may,  as  is  well  known,  give 
rise  to  a  contraction  of  the  muscles  of  one  side  of  the  neck,  or 
to  a  violent  facial  neuralgia,  or  to  blindness  or  deafness,  all 
which  presently  disappear  upon  the  removal  of  the  cause  of 
mischief.  A  functional  derangement  only  has  existed  so  far. 
But  the  irritation  of  a  bad  tooth  produces  a  greater  and  more 
.  lasting  effect  when,  as  does  now  and  then  happen,  an  abscess  in 
the  glands  of  the  neck  takes  place  in  consequence  of  it,  and 
remains  an  incurable  fistula  until  removal  of  the  scarce  sus- 
pected cause.  Then  nutritive  derangement  has  been  caused  and 
kept  up  by  the  reflex  irritation.  It  must  certainly  be  allowed 
that  the  functional  disorder,  when  it  alone  seems  to  exist,  does 
testify  to  some  kind  of  change  in  the  molecular  relations  of  the 
ganglionic  cells  ;  but  as  the  abnormal  modification  vanishes  the 
moment  the  real  cause  of  mischief,  the  bad  tooth,  is  gone,  it  is 
scarcely  possible  to  view  the  disturbed  function  as  evidence  of 
any  serious  nutritive  derangement  in  the  cells.  With  the 
continuance  of  the  cause  of  irritation,  the  functional  disorder 
undoubtedly  may,  and  is  liable  to,  pass  into  disorder  of  nutrition. 
The  relations  of  these  different  degrees  or  kinds  of  derangement 
to  the  morbid  cause,  however,  are  such  that  we  might  not 
unfairly  represent  the  sole  existing  functional  derangement  as 
due  to  a  modification  of  the  polar  molecules  of  the  nerve  ele- 
ment, while  the  abnormal  nutrition  may  be  supposed  to  mark 
an  actual  chemical  change  in  its  constitution. 

Again,  as  the  spinal  centres  minister  both  to  our  animal  life 
and  to  our  organic  life,  they  necessarily  have,  in  the  former  case, 
a.  periodical  function  ;  in  the  latter  case,  a  continuous  function. 
When,  therefore,  a  morbid  condition  of  the  ganglionic  cells,  as 
subserving  the  animal  life,  exists,  the  functional  derangement 
will  probably  be  not  continuous  but  intermittent.  Thus,  in 
epilepsy,  it  appears  as  if  the  reacting  centres  must  be  gradually 
charged  until  they  reach  a  certain  tension  or  instability,  when 
the  statical  equilibrium  is  destroyed,  and  they  discharge  them- 
selves violently.  Something  of  the  same  kind  takes  place  in  the 
poisonous  action  of  strychnia :  a  dog  so  poisoned  will  fall  down 


in.]  TERTIARY  NERVOUS  CENTRES,  ETC.  &\ 

in  convulsions,  but,  according  to  Schroeder  van  der  Kolk, 
they  cease  after  a  time,  and  the  animal  seems  to  be  perfectly 
well ;  even  for  so  long  as  an  hour  it  may  be  touched  or  stroked 
without  harm ;  after  which  the  susceptibility  again  becomes  so 
great,  that  by  simply  blowing  upon  the  animal  convulsions  are 
reproduced.  When,  on  the  other  hand,  the  function  of  the 
spinal  centres,  as  ministering  to  the  organic  life,  is  deranged, 
then  the  morbid  effect  will  not  unlikely  be  continuous.  The 
experiments  of  Lister,  showing  that  the  movements  of  the 
granules  in  the  pigment  cells  of  the  frog's  skin  are  under  the 
control  of  the  spinal  system,  and  the  investigations  of  Bernard 
also,  agree  to  prove  that  the  cerebro-spinal  axis  not  only  regu- 
lates the  contractions  of  the  small  arteries,  but  directly  influences 
the  organic  elements  engaged  in  nutrition  and  secretion.  Nume- 
rous examples  have  been  of  old  quoted  of  distant  modifications 
of  nuirition  in  consequence  of  some  irritation  of  a  centripetal 
nerve  :  a  large  secretion  of  extremely  acid  gastric  juice  has  been 
cured  by  the  extirpation  of  painful  piles  ;  ptyalism  is  some- 
times produced  by  neuralgia,  as  lacrymation  frequently  is  by 
neuralgia  of  the  fifth  nerve ;  irritation  of  the  uterus,  or  of  the 
skin  of  the  breasts,  or  of  the  mucous  membrane  of  the  vagina 
will  sometimes  give  rise  to  the  secretion  of  milk  ;  and  menstrua- 
tion may  follow  irritation  of  the  ovaries,  or  the  application  of 
warm  poultices  to  the  breasts.  We  witness  phenomena  due  to 
this  reflex  nutritive  action  again  in  the  sympathy  which  one  eye 
so  often  exhibits  with  disease  of  the  other ;  in  the  congestion  of 
the  eye  or  the  actual  amaurosis  which  sometimes  accompanies 
severe  neuralgia ;  in  the  paraplegia  due  to  displacement  or 
disease  of  the  uterus ;  and  in  many  other  instances  too  nume- 
rous to  be  mentioned.  Pfliiger  quotes  from  Dieffenbach  a 
striking  case,  which  admirably  illustrates  the  effects  of  an 
eccentric  irritation  upon  the  spinal  cord.  A  young  girl  fell  upon 
a  wine-glass,  and  cut  one  hand  with  a  piece  of  the  broken  glass  ; 
for  years  afterwards  she  suffered  from  violent  neuralgic  pains 
and  emaciation,  with  contraction  and  complete  uselessness  of 
the  hand.  She  was  afflicted  also  with  severe  attacks  of  epilepsy. 
On  cutting  through  the  cicatrix  of  the  old  wound,  a  minute 
splinter  of  glass,  which  had  wounded  the  nerve,  was  detected ; 
the  nerve  was  also  thickened  and  hardened.  After  removal  of 
7 


82  THE  SPINAL  CORD ;  OR,  [CHAP. 

the  glass,  the  neuralgia  and  epilepsy  disappeared,  and  the  girl 
recovered  the  entire  use  of  her  hand. 

5.  Lastly,  the  severance  of  the  connexion  between  the  brain 
and  the  ganglionic  cells  of  the  spinal  cord  seems  in  some  degree 
to  affect  their  function.  When  a  nerve  is  cut  across  in  the  living 
body,  the  peripheral  end  soon  undergoes  fatty  degeneration,  while 
the  central  end  remains  unchanged  after  years ;  and  this  degene- 
ration is  not  owing  solely  to  the  inactivity  of  the  nerve,  for  it 
still  takes  place  when  the  nerve  is  regularly  stimulated,  and 
takes  place  much  less  quickly  in  frogs  and  cold-blooded  animals 
than  in  warm-blooded  animals.  After  apoplexy  in  or  about  the 
corpus  striatum,  Turck  professes  to  have  found  granular  cells  in 
the  course  of  the  fibres  as  they  pass  downwards,  so  that  such 
cells  were  met  with  in  the  spinal  cord  on  the  opposite  side  to 
the  seat  of  disease.  It  is  known,  too.  that  the  removal  of  the 
brain  in  the  lower  animals  increases  the  ease  with  which.reflex 
movements  take  place ;  and  there  are  many  cases  on  record  in 
which  the  reflex  action  has  been  increased  in  man  when  disease 
or  injury  has  interrupted  the  continuity  of  the  spinal  centres 
with  the  brain.  May  we  not,  then,  conclude  from  such  facts 
that  a  positive  influence  is  exercised  by  the  brain  upon  the  nu- 
trition of  the  ganglionic  cells  of  the  cord  and  the  nerve  fibres 
which  proceed  from  the  cerebro-spinal  axis  ?  The  inference 
would  be  agreeable  to  what  we  know  of  the  direct  influence  of 
the  functional  action  of  the  brain  upon  that  of  the  cord;  the 
reflex  acts  being  in  health  notably  for  the  most  part  subordinate 
to  the  control  of  the  will.  As  a  guiding  influence  passes  from 
above  downwards  when  the  cerebro-spinal  system  is  ministering 
to  the  functions  of  animal  life;  so  it  is  not  improbable  that 
the  brain,  in  the  accomplishment  of  its  function  as  aa  organ 
of  organic  life,  exerts  some  power  which  is  favourable  to  the 
nutrition  of  the  parts  which  lie  below  it,  and  which  are  the 
instruments  through  which  it  acts.  It  is  true  that  some  have 
thought  to  explain  in  another  way  the  increase  in  the  reflex 
movements  which  follows  the  severance  of  communication  be- 
tween the  brain  and  cord  ;  they  have  attributed  it  to  the 
augmented  energy  of  the  spinal  centres,  and  to  the  concentration 
of  the  stimulus,  now  that  a  path  for  the  dissipation  of  its  force 
is  cut  .off.  Such  theory  is  not  innocent  of  the  vulgar  error  of 


in.]  TERTIARY  NER70US  CENTRES,  ETC.  83 

regarding  as  increased  energy  that  which  is  truly  a  diminution 
or  deterioration  of  the  higher  vital  energy  of  the  part.  Has 
it  ever  yet  happened  to  any  one  to  discover  that  the  co-ordinate 
reflex  acts  were  made  more  energetic  or  effective  by  cutting  off 
the  influence  of  the  brain  ?  One  most  necessary  function  of  the 
brain  is  to  exert  an  inhibitory  power  over  the  nervous  centres 
that  lie  below  it,  just  as  man  exercises  a  beneficial  control  over 
his  fellow  animals  of  a  lower  order  of  dignity ;  and  the  increased 
irregular  activity  of  the  lower  centres  surely  betokens  a  degene- 
ration :  it  is  like  the  turbulent,  aimless  action  of  a  democracy 
without  a  head. 

Such,  then,  are  the  disturbing  causes  which  may  affect  the 
activity  of  the  spinal  cord  both  as  a  conducting  path  and  as  an 
independent  centre  of  the  generation  of  nerve-power.  When 
we  reflect  upon  the  great  proportion  of  the  daily  actions  of  life 
that  are  effected  by  its  unconscious  agency,  we  cannot  but  per- 
ceive how  most  important  is  the  due  preservation  of  its  integrity. 
No  culture  of  the  mind,  however  careful,  no  effort  of  the  will, 
however  strong,  will  avail  to  prevent  irregular  and  convulsive 
action  when  a  certain  degree  of  instability  of  nervous  element 
has,  from  one  cause  or  another,  been  produced  in  the  spinal  cells. 
It  would  be  equally  absurd  to  preach  control  to  the  spasms  of 
chorea,  or  restraint  to  the  convulsions  of  epilepsy,  as  to  preach 
moderation  to  the  east  wind,  or  gentleness  to  the  hurricane. 
That  which  in  such  case  has  its  foundation  in  a  definite  physical 
cause  must  have  its  cure  in  the  production  of  a  definite  physical 
change. 

So  certain  and  intimate  is  the  sympathy  between  the  individual 
nerve-cells  in  that  well-organized  commonwealth  which  the 
nervous  system  represents,  that  a  local  disturbance  is  soon  felt 
more  or  less  distinctly  throughout  the  whole  state.  When  any 
serious  degeneration  of  the  gauglionic  cells  of  the  cord  exists 
there  is  not  only  an  indisposition  or  inability  to  carry  out  as 
subordinate  agents  the  commands  which  come  from  above ;  but 
there  is  a  complaint  sent  upwards — a  moan  of  discontent  or  pain 
reaches  the  supreme  authority.  That  is  the  meaning  of  the 
feelings  of  weariness,  heaviness,  achings  of  the  limbs,  and  utter 
lassitude  which  accompany  disorder  of  the  spinal  centres ;  and 
the  convulsive  spasms,  the  local  contractions  or  paralysis  of 


84  THE  SPINAL  CORD;  OR,  [CHAP. 

muscles  are  the  first  signs  of  a  coming  rebellion.  If  the  warnings 
do  not  receive  timely  attention,  a  riot  may  easily  become  a 
rebellion ;  for  when  organic  processes,  which  normally  go  on 
without  consciousness,  force  themselves  into  consciousness,  it  is 
the  certain  mark  of  a  vital  degeneration.  If  the  appeal  is  made 
in  vain,  then  further  degeneration  ensues.  Not  only  is  there 
irregular  revolutionary  action  of  a  subordinate,  but  there  is  pro 
tanto  a  weakening  of  the  supreme  authority ;  it  is  less  able  to 
control  what  is  more  difficult  of  control.  When  due  subordina- 
tion of  parts  exists,  and  the  individual  cell  conforms  to  the  laws 
of  the  system,  then  the  authority  of  the  head  is  strengthened. 
A  foolish  despot,  forgetting  in  the  pride  of  his  power  that  the 
strength  and  worth  of  a  government  flow  from  and  rest  upon 
the  well-being  of  the  governed,  may  fancy  that  he  can  safely 
disregard  the  cry  of  the  suffering  and  oppressed ;  but  when  he 
closes  his  ears  to  complaints  he  closes  his  eyes  to  consequences, 
and  finally  wakes  up  to  find  his  power  slipped  from  him,  and 
himself  entered  upon  the  way  of  destruction.  So  is  it  with  the 
nervous  system :  the  cells  are  the  individuals,  and,  as  in  the 
state,  so  here  there  are  individuals  of  higher  dignity  and  of 
lower  dignity;  but  the  well-being  and  power  of  the  higher  indi- 
viduals are  entirely  dependent  upon  the  well-being  and  content- 
ment of  the  humbler  workers  in  the  spinal  cord,  which  do  so 
great  a  part  of  the  daily  work  of  life.  The  form  of  government 
is  that  of  a  constitutional  monarchy,  in  which  every  interest  is 
duly  represented  through  adequate  channels,  and  in  which,  con- 
sequently, there  is  a  proper  subordination  of  parts. 

I  have  lingered  thus  long  upon  the  spinal  cord,  because  most 
of  what  has  been  said  with  regard  to  its  functions  may,  with 
the  necessary  change  of  terms,  be  applied  to  the  other  nervous 
centres.  A  distinct  conception  of  the  nature  and  mode  of 
development  of  the  functions  of  the  spinal  centres  is  indeed  the 
best,  is  the  only  adequate,  preparation  for  an  entrance  upon  the 
study  of  cerebral  action ;  it  is  an  indispensable  pre-requisite  to 
the  right  understanding  of  the  higher  displays  of  nervous 
function,  and  alone  fixes  the  sure  basis  whereon  to  build  a  true 
mental  science.*  Any  system  not  so  founded  follows  not  the 

*  In  the  "  Archly,  fur  Physiolog.  Heilkunde,"  1843,  there  is  an  excellent  paper 
by  Prof.  Griesinger,  "  Ueber  psychische  Eeflexactionen,  mit  einem  Blick  auf  das 


in.]  TERTIARY  NERVOUS  CENTRES,  ETC.  85 

order  of  development  in  nature,  and  must  be  unstable  and  in- 
secure :  nature  herself  protests  against  it  with  energetic  elo- 
quence when  she  makes,  as  she  unquestionably  sometimes  does, 
morbid  action  of  the  cells  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres  vicarious 
of  the  morbid  action  of  the  spinal  cells.* 


NOTES. 

1  (p.  64). — Pfliiger  compares  the  movements  of  a  decapitated  animal 
•with  those  of  a  sleeping  man,  making  the  movements  in  both  to  be 
conscious.  He  tickled  the  right  nostril  of  a  sleeping  boy,  and  the  lad 
rubbed  it  with  his  right  hand  :  when  Pfliiger  tickled  the  left  nostril  the 
lad  rubbed  it  with  his  left  baud.  If  he  held  the  sleeper's  right  hand, 
without  waking  him,  and  tickled  his  right  nostril,  the  boy  first  made 
attempts  with  his  right  hand  to  rub  it,  but  when  this  did  not  succeed, 
and  the  irritation  continued,  he  then  made  use  of  the  left  hand. 

For  a  fuller  discussion  of  the  assumed  consciousness  of  the  spinal 
cord  I  must  refer  to  my  review  of  Mr.  Bain  on  the  "  Senses  and  the 
Intellect,"  in  the  Journal  of  Mental  Science  for  January,  1865,  pp. 
558,  559.  I  will  only  now  add  a  quotation  from  Spinoza,  as  translated 
by  M.  Saisset.  "  Personne,  en  effet  n'a  determine  encore  ce  dont  le 
corps  est  capable ;  en  d'autres  termes  personne  n'a  encore  appris  de 
1'experience  ce  que  le  corps  peut  faire  et  ce  qu'il  ne  peut  pas  faire,  par 
les  seules  lois  de  la  nature  corporelle  et  sans  recevoir  de  Tame  aucune 
determination."  "  This  is  not  astonishing,"  he  adds,  "  as  no  one  has 
sufficiently  studied  the  functions  of  the  body,"  and  instances  the 
marvellous  acts  of  animals  and  somnambulists — "  toutes  choses  qui 

Wesen  der  psychischen  Krankheiten  ;  "  and  another  in  the  same  Journal  for  1854, 
"Neue  Beitrage  zur  Physiologic  und  Pathologic  des  Gehirns." 

*  I  cannot  forbear  quoting  here  the  appropriate  words  of  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill.  After 
saying  that  it  is  not  likely  that  the  direct  employment  of  mathematics  will  be 
available  to  any  great  extent  in  the  achievements  yet  to  be  effected  in  scientific 
generalization,  he  adds  :  "  But  the  process  itself — the  deductive  investigation  of 
nature,  the  application  of  elementary  laws  generalized  from  the  more  simple  cases 
to  disentangle  the  phenomena  of  complex  cases,  explaining  as  much  of  them  as 
can  be  so  explained,  and  putting  in  evidence  the  nature  and  limits  of  the  irre- 
ducible residuum,  so  as  to  suggest  fresh  observations  preparatory  to  recommencing 
the  same  process  with  additional  data  ;  this  is  common  to  all  science,  moral  and 
metaphysical  included  ;  and  the  greater  the  difficulty,  the  more  needful  is  it  that 
the  inquirer  should  come  prepared  with  an  exact  understanding  of  the  requisites 
of  this  mode  of  investigation,  and  a  mental  type  of  its  perfect  realization." — 
Examination  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  Philosophy. 


86  THE  SPINAL  CORD,  ETC.  [CHAP.  in. 

montrent  nssez  que  le  corps  humain,  par  les  seules  lois  de  la  nature, 
est  capable  (Tune  foule  d' operations  qui  sont  pour  1'ame  jointe  a  ce 

corps  un  objet  d'e"tonnement J'ajoute  enfin  que  le  mecanisme 

du  corps  humain  est  fait  avec  un  art  qui  surpasse  infiniment  1'industrie 
humaine."  The  associating  link  of  many  movements — as,  for  example, 
of  those  of  the  heart,  of  the  eye,  of  breathing — plainly  exists  in  the 
conformation  of  the  nervous  centres  ;  the  wisdom  or  design  is 
exhibited  in  the  primary  arrangement,  whereby  the  reactions  of  the 
organism  necessarily  following  do,  as  a  rule,  minister  to  the  further- 
ance of  its  well-being. 

2  (p.  66). — "And  therefore  it  was  a  good  answer,"  says  Bacon,  "  that 
was  made  by  one  who  when  they  showed  him  hanging  in  a  temple 
a  picture  of  those  who  had  paid  their  vows  as  having  escaped  ship- 
wreck, and  would  have  him  say  whether  he  did  not  now  acknowledge 
the  power  of  the  gods,   '  Ay,'   asks  he   again,   '  but  where  are  they 
painted  that  were  drowned  after  their  vows  ? ' "     Speaking  of  final 
causes,  upon  which  the .  human  understanding  falls  back,  he  says  that 
they  "  have  clearly  relation  to  the  nature  of  man  rather  than  to  the 
nature  of  the  universe ;  and  from,  this  source  have  strangely  defiled 
philosophy." — Nov.  Org.  Aphorism  xlviii. 

3  (p.  67). — "  After  the  actions  which  are  most  perfectly  voluntary 
have  been  rendered  so  by  one  set  of  associations,  they  may,  by  another, 
be  made  to  depend  upon  the  most  diminutive  sensations,  ideas,  and 
motions,  such  as  the  mind  scarce  regards,  or  is  conscious  of;  and  which, 
therefore,  it  can  scarce  recollect  the  moment  after  the  action  is  over. 
Hence  it  follows  that  association  not  only  converts  automatic  action 
into  voluntary,  but  voluntary  ones  into  automatic.     For  these  actions, 
of  which  the  mind  is  scarce  conscious,  and  which  follow  mechanically, 
as  it  were,  some  precedent  diminutive  sensation,  idea,  or  motion,  and 
without  any  effort  of  the  mind,  are  rather  to  be  ascribed  to  the  body 
than  the  mind,  i.e.  are  to  be  referred  to  the  head  of  automatic  action. 
I  shall  call  them  automatic  motions  of  the  secondary  kind  to  distin- 
guish them  from  those  which  are  originally  automatic,  and  from  the 
voluntary  ones ;  and  shall  now  give  a  few  instances  of  this  double 
transmutation  of  motions,  viz.  of  automatic  into  voluntary,  and  of 
voluntary  into  automatic."    He  instances  the  manner  in  which  children 
learn,  and  especially  the  way  we  learn  to  speak,  to  play  on  the  harpsi- 
chord, &c.     "  The   doctrine   of  vibrations   explains  all  the  original 
automatic  motions  ;  that  of  association,  the  voluntary  and  secondarily 
automatic  ones.'' — Hartley's  Tlieory  of  the  Human  Mind,  edited  by 
Priestley,  pp.  32,  39. 


CHAPTEK  IV. 

SECONDARY  NER70US  CENTRES,  OR  SENSORY  GANGLIA; 
SENSORIUM  COMMUNE. 


different  collections  of  grey  matter  which  exist  in  the 
4-  medulla  oblongata,  and  at  the  base  of  the  brain,  the  continua- 
tions of  the  grey  matter  of  the  spinal  cord,  consist  chiefly  of  the 
nervous  centres  of  the  higher  senses,  with  corresponding  centres 
of  motional  reaction.  Continuing  the  grey  substance  as  high  as 
the  floor  of  the  lateral  ventricles,  they  include  the  optic  thalami, 
the  corpora  striata,  the  corpora  quadrigemina,  and  the  ganglionic 
nuclei  of  the  nerves  of  the  different  senses.  Any  one  of  the 
senses  may  be  destroyed  by  injury  to  its  sensory  ganglion  as 
surely  as  by  actual  destruction  of  its  organ  ;  blindness  is  pro- 
duced by  injury  to  the  corpora  quadrigemina,  smell  is  abolished 
by  destruction  of  the  olfactory  bulbs.  These  ganglionic  centres 
are  thus  intermediate  between  the  higher  hemispherical  ganglia 
above  /and  the  spinal  centres  below  them  ;  to  those  they  are 
subordinate,  to  these  they  are  superordinate.  In  many  of  the 
lower  animals,  as  already  pointed  out,  the  brain  consists  of 
nothing  more  than  the  sensory  ganglia,  with  centres  of  motional 
reaction. 

The  ganglionic  centres  of  the  sensorium  commune  are  formed 
of  numerous  nerve-cells,  which,  like  those  of  the  spinal  cord,  are 
in  connexion  with  afferent  and  efferent  nerves  ;  the  afferent 
nerves,  in  this  case,  coming  mostly  from  the  organs  of  the  special 
senses.  The  impressions  which  the  afferent  nerve  bring  are,  there- 
fore, special  in  kind,  as  also  are  the  grey  nuclei  to  which  they  are 
brought  ;  a  progressive  differentiation  of  structure  and  function 
is  manifest  ;  and  we  might  almost  describe  the  sensorium  com- 
mune as  a  spinal  cord,  the  afferent  nerves  of  which  are  the  nerves 


88  '  SECONDARY  NER70US  CENTRES;  OR,  [CHAP. 

of  the  special  senses.  An  exact  knowledge  of  the  anatomical 
relations  of  the  different  grey  nuclei  is  still  wanting,  notwith- 
standing the  patient  investigations  of  Schroeder  van  der  Kolk. 
All  that  we  are  certain  of  is,  that  the  fibres  of  the  nerves  are 
connected  with  the  cells,  as  may  be  most  easily  seen  in  the  case 
of  the  auditory  nerve  and  ganglion ;  that  manifold  connexions 
exist  between  different  nuclei ;  and  that  fibres  may  sometimes 
be  traced  from  the  .nucleus  'of  a  sensory  nerve  to  a  motor  nerve, 
upon  which  it  is  known  to  exert  a  reflex  action.  The  trigemi- 
nus,  or  fifth  nerve,  for  example,  passes  from  above  downwards 
through  the  medulla,  and  in  its  downward  course  forms  reflex 
connexions  with  all  the  motor  nerves  of  the  medulla  as  it 
approaches  the  level  of  their  nuclei ;  in  this  way  the  facial,  the 
glossopharyngeal,  the  vagus,  the  spinal  accessory,  and  the  hypo- 
glossal  receive  communications  from  it.  The  ganglionic  cells  of 
different  nuclei  also  differ  in  form  and  size ;  and  Schroeder  van 
der  Kolk  holds  that,  as  a  general  rule,  at  every  spot  where  fibres 
are  given  off  for  the  performance  of  any  special  function,  there 
fresh  groups  of.  ganglionic  cells  giving  origin  to  them  appear. 
We  justly  conclude,  then,  that,  as  we  should  a  priori  expect, 
specially  constituted  ganglionic  cells  minister  to  special  functions  ; 
that  the  central  cells  are,  as  it  were,  the  workshops  in  which,  on 
the  occasion  of  a  suitable  stimulus,  the  peculiar  current  neces- 
sary JOT  the  performance  of  the  specific  action  is  excited.  Charged 
with  their  proper  force  during  the  assimilating  process  of  nutri- 
tion it  exists  in  them  as  statical  power,  or  latent  energy ;  and 
the'  condition  of  unstable  vital  equilibrium  is  upset,  the  force 
being  then  discharged,  as  the  Leyden  jar  is,  when  a  certain 
stimulus  meets  with  a  sufficient  tension. 

The  natural  course  of  a  stimulus,  all  the  force  of  which  is  not 
reflected  upon  an  efferent  nerve  in  the  spinal  centres,  is  up- 
wards to  the  sensorium  commune,  where  it  becomes  the  occasion 
of  a  new  order  of  phenomena ;  and,  as  Pfliiger  has  shown,  the 
law  of  extension  of  reflex  action  excited  by  a  spinal  nerve 
observably  is  from  below  upwards  to  the  medulla.  Having 
arrived  at  the  ganglionic  cells  of  the  sensorium  commune,  the 
stimulus  may  be  at  once  reflected  on  a  motor  nerve,  for  which 
there  is  provision  in  a  direct  physical  path,  and  involuntary 
movements  may  thus  take  place  in  answer  to  a  sensation, 


iv.]  SEXSORY  GANGLIA,  ETC.  89 

just  as  involuntary  movements  take  place  from  the  spinal 
centres  without  any  sensation.  The  ganglionic  cells  of  the 
sensory  centres  are  unquestionably  centres  of  independent  re- 
action, and  give  rise  to  a  class  of  reflex  movements  of  their  own. 
When  a  man  lies  with  the  lower  half  of  his  body  paralysed  in 
consequence  of  injury  or  disease  of  his  spinal  cord,  the  tickling 
of  the  soles  of  his  feet  will  sometimes  produce  reflex  movements 
of  which  he  is  unconscious.  When  a  man  lies  with  no  paralysis 
of  his  limbs,  but  with  a  perfectly  sound  spinal  cord,  the  sudden 
application  of  a  hot  iron  to  his  foot  or  leg  will  give  rise  to  a 
movement  quite  as  involuntary  as  that  which  takes  place  in  the 
paralysed  limb,  but,  in  this  case,  in  answer  to  a  painful  sensation ; 
the  reaction  takes  place  in  the  sensory  ganglia,  and  the  movement 
is  sensori-motor.  Had  the  hot  iron  been  applied  to  the  para- 
lysed limbs,  no  movement  would  have  followed,  because  the  path 
of  the  stimulus  was  cut  off  as  completely  as  the  current  of  the 
electric  stimulus  is  interrupted  when  the  telegraphic  wires  are 
cut  across.  Take  away  that  part  of  the  brain  of  an  animal  which 
lies  above  the  sensory  ganglia,  and  it  is  still  capable  of  sensori- 
motor  movement,  like  as  the  animal  which  possesses  no  cerebral 
hemispheres  is  :  because  the  ganglionic  cell  is  a  centre  of  inde- 
pendent reaction — a  station  on  the  line  which  may  either  send 
on  the  message  or  send  off  an  answer.*  (x) 

Examples  of  sensori-motor  movements  are  to  be  found  in  the 
involuntary  closure  of  the  eyelids  when  the  conjunctiva  is 
touched,  or  when  a  strong  light  falls  upon  the  eye  ;  in  the  dis- 
tortion of  the  face  on  account  of.  a  sour  taste  ;  in  the  quick  with- 
drawal of  the  hand  when  it  is  touched  by  something  hot ;  in  the 
cry  which  excessive  pain  calls  forth ;  in  the  motions  of  sucking 
which  take  place  when  the  nipple  is  put  between  the  infant's 
lips  ;  in  coughing  and  sneezing  ;  and  in  yawning  on  seeing  some 

*  Mr.  James  Mill  clearly  recognised  this  class  of  movements.  "Innumerable 
facts  are  capable  of  being  adduced  to  prove  that  sensation  is  a  cause  of  muscular 
action,"  p.  258.  After  instancing,  as  examples,  sneezing,  coughing,  the  contrac- 
tion of  the  pupils,  and  the  movements  of  the  eyelids,  he  says:— ""We  seem 
authorized,  therefore,  by  the  fullest  evidence,  to  assume  that  sensation  is  the 
mental  cause,  whatever  the  physical  links,  of  a  great  proportion  of  the  muscular 
contractions  of  our  frame  ;  and  that  among  those  so  produced  are  found  some  of 
the  most  constant,  the  most  remarkable,  and  the  most  important  of  that  great 
class  of  corporeal  phenomena." — Analysis  of  the  Human  Mind,  p.  265. 


90  SECONDARY  NERFOUS  CENTRES;  OR,  [CHAP. 

one  else  yawn.  Illustrations  of  acquired  movements  of  this  class 
are  seen  in  the  adaptation  of  the  walk  to  the  music  of  a  military 
band,  in  dancing,  in  the  articulation  of  words  on  seeing  their 
appropriate  signs,  and  in  many  other  of  the  common  actions  of 
life  of  which  we  are  not  conscious  at  the  time,  but  of  the  neces- 
sity of  which,  were  there  no  power  of  automatically  performing 
them,  we  should  soon  become  actively  conscious.  The  instinctive 
actions  of  animals  fall  under  the  category  of  consensual  acts : 
without  the  intervention  of  any  conception,  the  sensation  at  once 
excites  the  appropriate  movement,  and  the  animal  is  as  skilful 
on  its  first  trial  as  it  is  after  a  life  experience.  It  is  true  that 
the  instinctive  life  is  extremely  limited  in  man,  but  sensori- 
motor  action  plays  a  large  part  in  such  manifestations  of  it  as 
are  witnessed ;  in  the  taking  of  food  the  movements  of  mastica- 
tion, like  the  earlier  ones  of  sucking,  are  in  answer  to  a  sensa- 
tion, as  also  are  some  of  the  co-ordinated  movements  necessary 
to  the  gratification  of  the  instinct  of  procreation.  The  adjust- 
ment of  the  eye  to  distances  in  man,  through  a  change  in  the 
convexity  of  the  lens  or  the  cornea,  and  an  alteration  in  the 
direction  of  the  axes  of  the  eyes,  which  takes  place  with  such 
marvellous  quickness  and  accuracy,  is  a  consensual  act  in 
respondence  to  a  visual  sensation,  and  may  serve  to  give  us  a 
good  notion  of  what  an  instinctive  act  in  an  animal  is. 

It  was  said,  when  treating  of  the  spinal  cord,  that  its  faculties 
were,  for  the  most  part,  not  innate  but  acquired ;  and  the  same 
thing  may  be  said  of  sensations.  Sensation  is  not,  as  the  common 
use  of  the  word  might  seem  to  imply,  a  certain  inborn  faculty  of 
constant  quantity,  but  in  reality  a  general  term  embracing  a 
multitude  of  particular  phenomena  that  exhibit  every  degree  of 
variation  both  in  quantity  and  quality.  The  sensation  of  each 
sense  is  a  gradually  organized  result  or  faculty  that  is  matured 
through  experience  :  the  visual  sensation  of  the  adult  is  a  very 
different  matter  from  that  of  the  child  whose  eyes  have  recently 
opened  upon  the  world;  Mr.  Nunneley's  patient,  whose  sight 
was  restored  by  operation,  held  his  hands  before  his  face  to 
prevent  objects  touching  his  eyes  ;  the  wine-taster's  cultivated 
sense  is  nowise  comparable  with  that  of  a  man  who  knows 
nothing  of  wine ;  the  tactile  sensation  of  the  blind  man  differs 
toto  codo  from  that  of  the  man  who  has  always  had  the  full  use 


iv.]  SENSORY  GANGLIA,  ETC.  91 

of  his  eyes.  The  complete  and  definite  sensation  is  slowly  "built 
up  in  the  proper  nervous  centres  from  the  residua  or  traces 
which  previous  sensations  of  a  like  kind  have  left  behind  them ; 
and  the  sensation  of  the  cultivated  sense  thus  sums  up,  as  it 
were,  a  thousand  experiences,  as  one  word  often  contains  the  accu- 
mulated acquisitions  of  generations.*  Simple  as  a  sensation  ap- 
pears, it  is  in  reality  infinitely  compound.  (2)  All  that  is  innate 
in  the  different  ganglionic  centres  is  a  specific  po\ver  of  reaction 
to  certain  impressions  made  upon  organs  specially  adapted  to 
receive  them ;  the  waste  following  activity  is  restored  by  nutri- 
tion, and  a  trace  or  residuum  remains  embodied  in  the  consti- 
tution of  the  nervous  centre,  becoming  more  complete  and  distinct 
with  each  succeeding  repetition  of  the  impression  :  an  acquired 
nature  is  grafted  on  the  original  nature  of  the  cell  by  virtue  of 
its  plastic  power.  In  the  common  metaphysical  conception  of 
sensation  as  a  certain  constant  faculty  what  happens  is  this  :  the 
abstraction  from  the  particular  is  converted  into  an  objective 
entity  which  thenceforth  tyrannizes  over  the  understanding. 

"Whether,  as  some  hold,  our  perception  of  the  form  and 
distance  of  external  objects  is  due  to  our  muscular  experience, 
or  whether,  as  others  maintain,  our  visual  sensation  by  itself 
may  give  the  notion  of  extension  and  distance,  it  is  certain  that 
our  ordinary  estimates  of  distance  are  very  gradually  acquired. 
But  it  is  not  so  in  many  animals  :  the  young  swallow  can  seize 
its  small  prey  with  as  accurate  a  skill  as  the  old  one  after  a  life 
experience ;  and  there  is  a  fish  that  spurts  a  drop  of  water  at 
the  little  insect  moving  above  the  surface,  and  fails  not  to  bring 
it  down :  the  intuition  of  distance  is  obviously  in  such  cases 
complete  and  distinct  from  the  first.  It  is,  however,  conformable 
to  the  law  of  development  from  the  general  to  the  special  in  the 
organic  world,  that  what  is  innate  in  some  of  the  lower  animals 
should  be  acquired  by  man :  the  absence  of  such  limitation  in 

*  In  regard  to  this  question,  an  experiment  by  Volkmann,  quoted  by  Fick,  is 
interesting  and  instructive.  When  the  finger,  or  any  limited  portion  of  skin  on 
one  side  of  the  body,  is  frequently  experimented  upon  with  the  compasses,  in 
order  to  test  the  degree  of  sensibility,  and  its  tactile  sensibility  thereby  increased, 
as  it  notably  is,  above  the  level  of  that  of  neighbouring  parts,  the  symmetrical 
part  of  the  skin  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  body  will  be  found  to  be  almost 
as  acute,— an  experimental  proof  of  the  same  kind  as  that  \vhich  the  stereo- 
scope furnishes. 


92  SECONDARY  NERFOUS  CENTRES;  OR,  [CHAP. 

his  original  nature  marks  his  higher  freedom.  Still  it  is  most 
interesting  to  observe  how  much  even  he  is  indebted  to  original 
endowment  in  this  very  matter  of  estimating  distance.  For 
what  is  the  immediate  cause  that  determines  the  muscular 
adjustment  of  the  eye  to  distance  ?  The  act  is  consensual,  or, 
using  the  vaguer  term,  instinctive,  in  respondence  to  a  visual 
sensation  or  picture — an  act  of  which  there  is  no  direct  con- 
sciousness, and  over  which  the  will  has  no  direct  control. 
Though  the  process  is  confused  and  uncertain  at  first,  unlike  in 
that  regard  the  process  in  the  lower  animals,  yet  it  is  not  long 
before  the  proper  muscular  adaptations  are  acquired  and  definite 
muscular  intuitions  organized.  Plainly,  then,  very  much  is  due 
to  the  pre-arranged  constitution  of  the  nervous  centres  even  in 
man.  And  while  we  assert  that  sensation  is  not  an  inborn 
faculty  of  constant  value  in  man,  it  behoves  us  not  to  forget  the 
fact  that  there  are  implanted  in  the  constitution  of  his  nervous 
centres  the  capabilities  of  certain  definite  associated  movements 
answering  to  certain  sensations. 

The  idea,  to  be  formed  and  fixed  in  the  mind  from  a  consi- 
deration of  the  phenomena  of  the  development  of  sensation,  and 
necessary  to  its  proper  interpretation,  as  indeed  to  the  interpre- 
tation of  every  manifestation  of  life,  is  the  idea  of  organization. 
The  mind  is  not  like  a  sheet  of  white  paper  which  receives  just 
what  is  written  upon  it,  nor  like  a  mirror  which  simply  reflects 
more  or  less  faithfully  every  object,  but  it  implies  a  plastic 
power  ministering  to  a  complex  process  of  organization,  in  which 
what  is  suitable  to  development  is  assimilated,  what  is  unsuit- 
able is  rejected.  By  the  appropriation  of  the  like  in  impressions 
made  upon  the  senses  we  acquire,  as  we  might  say,  and  as  we 
do  say  when  speaking  of  idea,  a  general  or  abstract  sensation, 
which  exists,  latent  or  potential,  as  a  faculty  of  the  sensory 
centres,  and  on  the  occasion  of  the  appropriate  impression 
renders  the  sensation  clear  and  definite.  It  is  exactly  like 
what  happens  in  the  spinal  centres,  and  exactly  like  what 
happens,  as  we  shall  hereafter  see,  in  the  ideational  centres. 
Coincidently  with  the  assimilation  of  the  like  in  impressions, 
there  is  necessarily  a  rejection  of  the  unlike,  which,  being  then 
appropriated  by  other  cells,  becomes  the  foundation,  or  lays  the 
basis,  of  the  faculty  of  another  sensation,  just  as  nutrient  material 


iv.J  SENSORY  GANGLIA,  ETC.  93 

which  is  not  taken  up  by  one  kind  of  tissue  element  is  assimi- 
lated by  another  kind.  In  the  education  of  the  senses,  then, 
there  takes  place  a  differentiation  of  cells,  in  other  words,  a 
discernment,  as  well  as  an  improvement  of  the  faculty  of  each 
kind  of  sensation  by  the  blending  of  similar  residua.  There  is 
an  analysis  separating  the  unlike,  a  synthesis  blending  the  like  ; 
and  by  the  two  processes  of  differentiation  and  integration  are 
our  sensations  gradually  developed.  The  process  illustrates  the 
increasing  speciality  of  individual  adaptation  to  external  nature  ; 
and  the  length  of  childhood  in  man  is  in  relation  to  the  forma- 
tion of  his  complex  sensations. 

The  organization  of  our  sensations  is  not,  however,  limited 
simply  to  the  formation  of  the  particular  sensation ;  it  effects 
also  the  association  or  catenation  of  sensations.  In  animals 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  one  sensation  frequently  calls  another 
into  activity,  in  accordance  with  the  order  established  among 
them,  without  the  intervention  of  idea;  they  are  much  more 
dependent  on  sensation  than  man  is,  and  therefore  the  asso- 
ciation of  sensations  in  the  causation  of  movements  is  more 
marked.  Hence  it  is  that  blinding  of  one  eye  produces  verti- 
ginous movements  in  pigeons,  as  Flourens  and  Longet  have 
shown,  and  that  section  of  the  semicircular  canals  of  the  ear 
also  produces  various  disturbances  of-  movements.  In  man  it 
is  certainly  difficult  to  eliminate  the  influence  of  the  higher 
cerebral  centres,  yet  in  those  functions  in  which  consensual 
action  has  most  part — in  the  taking  of  food,  for  example,  where 
succeeding  sensations  bring  into  successive  action  different  com- 
plex muscular  movements,  and  again  in  sexual  copulation — there 
is  abundant  evidence  of  an  association  of  sensations. 

Thus  much  concerning  sensation,  viewed  on  its  passive  or 
receptive  side.  Let  us  say  something  more  of  the  active,  re- 
acting, or  distributive  side — of  the  movements  which  take  place  in 
answer  to  sensations.  These  reactions  may,  like  the  reflex  move- 
ments of  the  spinal  cord,  be  irregular,  as  when  a  wry  face  is 
produced  by  a  sour  taste,  or  a  general  start  of  the  body  follows  a 
sudden  loud  noise ;  or  co-ordinate,  as  in  coughing  and  sneezing. 
Of  the  co-ordinate  or  designed  movements,  again,  some  are  innate, 
as  those  of  the  animals  mostly  are;  others  are  acquired  or 
secondarily  automatic,  as  is  mostly  the  case  in  man. 


94  SECONDARY  NERVOUS  CENTRES;  OR,  [CHAP. 

The  innate  sensori-motor  actions  of  animals  include,  as  before 
said,  their  instinctive  acts.  '  These  have  for  aim  the  preservation 
of  the  individual  and  the  propagation  of  the  species  ;  and  are 
comparable  to  such  movements  in  man  as  the  closure  of  the  eye- 
lid when  the  conjunctiva  is  touched  or  the  eye  threatened,  the 
withdrawal  of  the  hand  when  suddenly  burnt,  the  sneezing  by 
which  an  offending  body  is  ejected  from  the  air  passages,  or  some 
of  the  movements  in  sexual  copulation.  The  faculty  of  executing 
them  exists  in  the  pre-arranged  constitution  of  the  nervous 
centres,  and  is  entirely  independent  of  will  or  experience  ;  so 
that  if  we  chose  to  assume  a  consciousness  in  the  individual 
cells  ministering  to  them  we  should  say  that  they  possessed  a 
notion  of  the  end  to  be  effected,  The  cells  probably  possess  such 
notion  exactly  in  the  same  manner  as  the  elements  of  a  chemical 
compound  possess  a  notion  of  the  end  which  they  are  going  to 
accomplish,  or  as  the  wind  bloweth  where  it  listeth  ;*  accord- 
ingly they  do  not  fail  at  times  to  make  terrible  mistakes,  and 
perhaps  miserably  to  kill  an  individual  by  continuing  violently 
a  reflex  action,  in  the  cessation  of  which  lay  the  only  hope  of 
life.  When  the  cerebral  hemispheres  are  experimentally  removed 
in  animals,  as  was  done  by  Flourens  and  Schiff,  the  sensori-motor 
acts  abide  :  the  animal  appears  as  if  in  a  sleep  or  dream,  and 
takes  no  notice  ;  yet  if  a  pigeon  so  treated  be  thrown  into  the  air, 
it  flies ;  if  laid  on  its  back,  it  gets  up ;  the  pupil  contracts  to 
light,  and  in  a  very  bright  light  the  eyes  are  shut ;  it  will  dress 
its  feathers  if  they  are  ruffled,  and  will  sometimes  follow  by  a 
movement  of  the  head  the  movement  of  a  candle  hither  and 
thither" :  certain  impressions  are  plainly  received,  but  they  are 
not  further  fashioned  into  ideas,  because  the  nervous  centres  of 
ideas  have  been  removed ;  and,  as  has  been  aptly  observed,  the 
animal  would  die  of  hunger  before  a  plateful  of  food,  although 
it  would  swallow  the  food  if  put  into  its  mouth.  The  clenching 
of  the  teeth  in  man  during  severe  pain  is  sensori-motor,  arid  only 

*  "  Whoever  will  examine  the  language  of  mankind  may  find  that  \ve  apply 
expressions  of  bodies  which  belong  properly  to  our  own  manner  of  proceeding ; 
and  how  well  soever  we  know  the  contrary,  speak  of  them  as  voluntary  agents, 
exercising  powers  of  their  own  ;  thus  it  is  said  that  the  wind  bloweth  where  it 
listeth,  and  we  say  of  water,  that  it  will  not  mingle  with  oil,  that  it  will  force  its 
way,  &c.  •  terms  expressive  of  a  choice,  compliance,  and  resolution  similar  to  those 
exercised  by  man." — Tucker's  Light  of  Nature,  vol.  ii.  p.  545. 


TV.]  SENSORY  GANGLIA,  ETC.  95 

a  less  degree  of  the  same  kind  of  reflex  action  which  in  lockjaw 
becomes  actual  spasm.  Schroeder  van  der  Kolk  mentions  a  lady 
who  had  her  breast  amputated  under  chloroform,  and  who,  though 
she  felt  no  pain,  was  perfectly  conscious  on  awakening  that  she 
had  heard  herself  shriek ;  and  he  has  witnessed  violent  shrieking 
in  apoplexy,  where  there  was  no  trace  of  consciousness.  Any 
one  who  has  walked  through  a  parrot  house,  and  heard  the  fear- 
ful noise  which  these  screaming  creatures  make,  must  have 
surely  felt  an  involuntary  inclination  to  shriek  also. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  sensori-motor  reaction  may 
be  excited  not  only  by  the  stimulus  from  without,  but  also,  by,  so 
to  speak,  sensation  from  within  the  body — by  the  organic  stimuli. 
It  is  not  because  we  have  no  direct  consciousness  of  the  operation 
of  these  stimuli  that  they  do  not  therefore  influence  the  mental 
life.  In  animals,  the  actions  respondent  to  them  constitute  the 
principal  manifestations  of  their  psychical  life ;  and  in  man, 
when  the  influence  of  the  higher  nervous  centres  is  weakened  by 
disease,  or  when  an  organic  stimulus  has  an  abnormal  activity, 
as  happens  often  in  insanity,  we  sometimes  see  the  instinct  for 
food  or  the  sexual  instinct  manifested  with  an  utter  shamelessness. 
In  such  cases  there  is  great  truth  in  an  observation  made  by 
Jacobi,  that  the  actions  of  the  insane  have  an  instinct-like 
character,  as  their  physiognomies  take  on  an  animal-like  look. 
The  great  revolution  effected  in  the  mental  nature  of  man  at  the 
time  when  the  organs  of  reproduction  come  into  functional 
activity,  affords  a  striking  illustration  of  a  physiological  effect 
which  in  less  degree  is  common  to  all  the  organic  stimuli.  And 
no  account  of  the  sensori-motor  actions  can  be  complete  which 
fails  to  give  due  appreciation  to  the  influence  of  a  stimulus 
arising  within  the  organism  as  an  exciting  cause  of  certain 
associated  or  aim-working  movements. 

Of  more  importance  than  the  innate  sensori-motor  acts  in 
human  development  are  those  which  are  acquired,  and  which 
are  often  called  the  secondary  automatic  acts.  When  any  one 
moves  about  in  a  house  or  a  room  with  the  objects  in  which  he 
is  quite  familiar,  he  is  scarce  more  conscious  of  the  greater  part 
of  his  movements  or  of  the  objects  around  than  he  is  of  the 
movements  of  his  breathing'  or  of  his  particular  steps  in  walking; 
notwithstanding  which  he  does  not  run  against  the  chairs  nor 


96  SECONDARY  NERVOUS  CENTRES;  OR,  [CHAP. 

stumble  at  the  stairs,  but  fairly  adapts  his  movements  to  the 
positions  of  objects.  But  if  some  new  piece  of  furniture  be 
placed  in  a  part  of  the  room  where  there  was  nothing  before,  the 
chances  are  that  he  does  stumble  against  it,  until,  by  familiarity 
or  habit,  the  sensation  of  its  presence  has  been  associated  with 
ft  corresponding  movement.  It  will  sometimes  happen  that, 
when  the  mind  has  been  deeply  occupied,  a  person  has  walked 
from  one  place  to  another  through  busy  streets  and  yet  been 
unable,  when  coming  afterwards  to  think,  to  say  positively  which 
way  he  took.  In  dancing,  in  playing  some  musical  instrument, 
in  writing,  in  that  grace  and  ease  of  movement  acquired  by  social 
cultivation,  we  have  other  excellent  examples  of  acquired  con- 
sensual acts.  A  more  striking  instance,  perhaps,  than  any  of 
these  is  the  association  which  is  established  by  education  between 
particular  sounds  or  particular  visual  sensations,  and  the  adapted 
complex  movements  for  the  articulation  of  the  appropriate  words. 
Children  plainly  exhibit  a  great  tendency  to  imitate  a  particular 
sound,  when  there  is  certainly  not  yet  any  idea  of  what  the 
sound  means ;  and,  as  every  one  knows,  it  is  sufficiently  easy  to 
read  aloud  without  the  slightest  attention  to  the  meaning  ol' 
what  is  read,  the  consciousness  being  otherwise  engaged.  Dr. 
Kadcliffe  tells  of  a  child  which  could  speak  both  in  English  and 
German,  but  which  always  replied  to  a  question  in  the  language 
in  which  it  was  addressed,  and  could  not  reply  to  an  English 
question  in  German,  or  to  a  German  question  in  English.  With- 
out doubt  the  child  connected  definite  ideas  with  the  words  used ; 
but  the  fact  that  it  could  not  put  the  same  ideas  into  one  language 
or  the  other,  as  required,  showed  the  dominion  exercised  by  the 
sound  over  the  articulating  movements — the  mechanical  con- 
nexion established  between  sensation  and  movement.  Language, 
difficult  as  it  is  of  acquisition,  ultimately  gets  all  the  ease  of  a 
reflex  act,  and  so  many  waste  floods  of  fruitless  words  are  poured 
forth  without  fatigue  by  some  who,  like  Peter  proposing  to  build 
the  three  tabernacles,  wist  not  what  they  say.  Consciousness  is 
not  a  necessary  accompaniment ;  talking  may  be  conscious,  semi- 
conscious, or  entirely  unconscious.  Secondary  automatic  acts  of 
a  like  kind  are  also  observably  acquired  by  animals,  although  in 
them  the  consensual  .acts  are  mostly  innate;  particular  habits 
or  tricks  being  observably  taught  to  them  or  acquired  by  them. 


iv.j  SENSORY  GANGLIA,  ETC.  97 

How  rnany  of  the  common  actions  of  man's  everyday  life  fall 
under  this  category,  few  people  sufficiently  appreciate. 

It  is  of  the  utmost  importance  to  a  true  conception  of  the 
nature  of  mental  action  that  the  full  meaning  and  real  bearino1 

o  o 

of  the  foregoing  facts  should  be  distinctly  realized.  From  a 
physiological  point  of  view  they  are  readily  enough  admitted ; 
but  the  moment  sensation  is  viewed  as  a  mental  faculty,  an 
entirely  new  order  of  ideas  commonly  supervenes,  and  it  appears 
to  be  thought  monstrous  to  suppose  that  the  full  sensation  is  not 
innate,  but  gradually  matured  through  years  of  experience. 
Then,  again,  it  is  almost  impossible  to  make  those  who  take  the 
metaphysical  view  of  mental  action,  realize  the  organic  connexion 
which  is  established  between  the  stimulus,  or  the  sensation,  and 
certain  movements,  whereby  these  finally  become  mechanical  or 
automatic  :  when  any  end  is  accomplished,  they  fail  not  instantly 
to  assign  consciousness,  and  to  assume  design.  It  is  not  necessary 
to  repeat  here  what  was  said  of  design,  when  treating  of  the 
spinal  cord  :  the  act,  with  whatever  of  design  -it  contains,  is  the 
necessary  result  of  a  certain  constitution,  innate  or  acquired,  of 
the  nervous  centres.  In  the  humbler  animals  the  life-aims  are 
merely  organic  ;  the  sensory  ganglia  suffice,  therefore,  as  nervous 
apparatus  ;  and  the  faculties  of  them,  being  primordial,  are  com- 
paratively few,  fixed,  and  simple.  In  man,  however,  whose 
relations  are  so  much  more  numerous  and  special,  whose  life-aims 
reach  far  beyond  the  mere  organic,  there  is  not  only  a  further 
complication  of  the  nervous  system  as  an  original  fact,  but  there 
is  an  acquired  adaptation  throughout  life  of  the  sensory  ganglia 
to  the  complex  external  relations,  so  that  their  functional  mani- 
festations are  more  numerous,  special,  and  complex.  But  in  the 
latter  case,  as  in  the  former,  the  action  is  ultimately  automatic, 
and  then  as  effectually  accomplished  without  consciousness  as 
with  it.  Until  the  psychologists  ground  their  conceptions  on 
these  simple  truths,  they  must  continue  to  struggle  fruitlessly  in 
the  maze  of  undefined  words. 

The  reaction  of  the  motor  ganglia  in  the  sensorium  commune, 
whether  designed  or  undesigned,  co-ordinate  or  irregular,  may  be 
excited  not  only  by  impressions  conveyed  to  them  by  afferent 
nerves,  and  by  the  so-called  organic  stimuli,  but  also  by  a 
stimulus  descending  from  above.  An  idea  or  an  impulse  of  the 
8 


98  SECONDARY  NERFOUS  CENTRES;  OR,  [CHAP. 

will,  coming  from  the  higher  nervous  centres,  may  act  upon  the 
ganglionic  secondary  centres,  and  call  forth  those  movements 
which  are  commonly  reflex  to  impressions  from  without.  In 
such  case  it  is  tolerably  certain  that  the  idea  or  volitional  impulse 
does  not  act  directly  on  the  motor  nerve  fibres,  but  indirectly 
through  the  ganglionic  cells  of  the  motor  nuclei,  in  which  the 
potentiality  of  the  movement  exists  latent,  statical,  or,  as  it  were, 
abstract ;  the  stimulus  from  above  disturbing  the  organic  equili- 
brium, and,  as  it  were,  releasing  or  setting  free  the  movement 
together  with  whatsoever  of  design  there  is  in  it,  just  as  the 
impression  conveyed  by  the  afferent  nerve  from  without  does. 
Thus  the  will  is  entirely  dependent  for  its  outward  realisation 
upon  that  mechanism  of  automatic  action  which  is  gradually 
organised  in  the  subordinate  centres ;  the  will  cannot,  as  we 
shall  hereafter  see,  at  once  execute  successfully  a  new  move- 
ment, nor  can  it  execute  any  movement  without  a  guiding 
sensation  of  some  kind :  the  cultivation  of  the  senses,  and  the 
gradually  effected  special  adaptation  of  their  reactions,  are  neces- 
sary antecedents,  essential  pre-requisites,  to  the  due  formation 
and  operation  of  will.  The  sensorium  commune  represents,  in 
fact,  various  independent  nervous  centres,  and  never  does  act 
merely  as  a  conductor  transmitting  unmodified  the  stimulus, 
whether  this  ascend  from  without,  or  descend  from  the  cerebral 
hemispheres.  Bear  this  clearly  in  mind,  and  the  memory  of  it 
will  help  to  get  rid  of  some  difficulties,  when  we  come  to  deal 
with  the  will. 

It  is  not  needful  to  say  anything  here  of  the  seeming  dispro- 
portionate amount  of  force  given  out  in  the  movement  which  is 
respondent  to  a  moderate  stimulus  to  the  sensory  ganglia  ;  inas- 
much as  what  was  said  in  this  regard  of  the  spinal  centres  is 
strictly  applicable  to  the  secondary  nervous  centres.  A  special 
investigation  would  only  serve  here,  as  elsewhere,  to  adduce 
needless  evidence  in  support  of  the  principle  of  the  conservation 
of  force. 

And  now  let  us  briefly  indicate  the  general  causes  of  disorder 
of  the  functions  of  the  sensory  ganglia :  they  are  mainly  such  as 
have  been  already  pointed  out  as  causes  of  disturbance  of  the 
functions  of  the  spinal  cord : — 

1.  As  a  natural  fact,  there  may  be  an  innate  vice,  feebleness, 


iv.]  SENSORY  GANGLIA,  ETC.  99 

or  instability  of  composition  of  the  ganglionic  cells.  Such  fault 
of  nature  is  commonly  owing  to  the  existence  of  some  nervous 
disease  in  the  hereditary  antecedents  ;  but  it  may  of  course  be 
due  to  any  other  of  the  many  recondite  causes  of  degeneration 
of  nervous  element.  Hallucinations  of  vision  are  by  no  means 
unfrequent  amongst  some  children  at  an  early  age,  especially 
among  such  as  suffer  from  chorea.  And  in  those  rare  cases  in 
which  insanity  occurs  in  children  almost  from  the  time  of  their 
nativity,  it  is  chiefly  exhibited  in  violent  and  irregular  sensori- 
motor  movements ;  herein  there  is  a  resemblance  to  the  insanity 
that  sometimes  ensues  in  animals.  The  unnatural  laughter,  the 
shrieking,  the  biting,  and  the  tearing,  of  the  insane  infant, 
assuredly  testify  to  a  degenerate  state  of  the  motor  and  sensory 
cells  in  the  sensorium  commune  :  one  might  even  venture  to  say 
that  there  was  a  true  sensorial  madness.  It  is  most  interesting 

O 

to  add  that  the  disorder  may  alternate  with,  or  be  replaced  by, 
general  convulsions,  the  madness  ceasing  when  the  convulsions 
supervene,  and  supervening  when  the  convulsions  cease ;  there 
is  a  transference  of  the  disturbance  from  one  system  of  nervous 
centres  to  another. 

Again,  there  may  be  every  degree  of  deficient  sensibility  down 
to  actual  insensibility  of  the  ganglionic  cells  of  the  sensory 
ganglia.  It  is  obvious  that  people  differ  naturally  in  the  acute- 
ness  of  their  senses  ;  and  in  idiots  the  senses  notably  partake  of 
the  general  stupidity.  In  them  the  hearing  is  frequently  defec- 
tive ;  smell  is  often  imperfect,  the  olfactory  bulbs  being  insuffi- 
ciently developed ;  taste  absent  or  extremely  vitiated,  so  that 
they  will  eat  unconcerned  the  filthiest  or  the  most  pungent 
matters ;  and  the  sensibility  of  the  skin  is  sometimes  extensively 
absent,  or  it  is  generally  dull,  so  that  they  suffer  very  little  pain 
from  injuries.  The  idiots  of  the  lowest  class  have  usually  no 
other  affection  but  that  of  hunger,  which  they  exhibit  by  unrest, 
granting,  or  the  like  ;  but  even  some  of  these  miserable  creatures 
have  at  times  attacks  of  fury,  without  evident  reason,  in  which 
they  scratch,  strike  and  bite,  as  the  insane  infant  does. 

Dulness  of  sensibility,  when  not  nearly  reaching  the  stage  of 
idiotic  degeneration,  is  of  course  unfavourable  to  intellectual 
acquisition ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  a  very  acute  and  delicate 
sensibility  is  attended  with  evils  and  dangers  of  its  own.  In 


100  SECONDARY  NER70US  CENTRES;  OR,  [CHAP. 

the  former  case,  although  there  is  an  impediment  to  assimilation, 
yet  that  which  is  appropriated  is  commonly  retained  with  great 
persistency  ;  in  the  latter  case,  there  is  certainly  quick  reaction, 
but  no  lasting  appropriation,  and,  if  the  sensibility  is  intensified 
beyond  a  certain  point,  there  may  even  be  a  lapse  into  that 
degenerate  state  in  which,  not  the  special  sensation,  but  pain  is 
felt,  and  irregular  and  convulsive  reaction  takes  place.  It  is  of 
no  small  importance  that  these  natural  differences  in  the  consti- 
tution of  the  ganglionic  cells  should  be  plainly  recognized,  for 
they  unquestionably  are  at  the  root  of  certain  differences  in 
character  and  intellect. 

2.  An  excessive  use  of  the  senses,  without  due  intervals  of  rest, 
produces  exhaustion,  or  actual  degeneration  of  them;  here,  as 
elsewhere,  the  force  expended  must  be  restored,  if  the  energy  of 
the  matter  is  to  be  maintained.     A  too  powerful  impression 
made  upon  any  sense  may  also  diminish,  or  actually  destroy,  its 
power  of  reaction ;  immediate  paralysis  of  sight,  of  hearing,  or 
of  smell  has  followed  a  sudden  and  powerful  impression  upon  the 
particular  sense  ;  and  if  the  paralysis  is  not  complete,  the  sensi- 
bility of  the  sense  for  weaker  impressions  may  still  be  lowered  for 
some  time.     Moreover,  the  sensation  itself  may  persist  for  a  while 
after  the  cause  of  it  has  disappeared,  as  when  an  image  of  the 
sun  remains  after  we  have  ceased  to  look  at  it,  or  the  roar  of  the 
cannon  abides  in  the  ears  after  the  firing  has  ceased.    Such  per- 
sistence of  action  in  the  ganglionic  cell  will  serve  to  convey  a 
notion  of  the  condition  of  things  when  there  is  hallucination 
otherwise  caused. 

3.  The  state  of  the  blood  has  the  most  direct  effect  upon  the 
functions  of  the  sensory  ganglia.     Too  much  blood,  as  is  well 
known,  gives  rise  to  subjective  sensations,  such  as  flashes  of  light 
before  the  eyes,  and  roaring  in  the  ears ;  but  it  is  not  so  generally 
known  that,  when  the  abnormal  action  reaches  a  certain  intensity, 
movements  responsive  to,  or  sympathetic  with,  the  hallucina- 
tions may  take  place.     Nevertheless,  they  may  :  as  the  sensory- 
ganglia  have  an  independent  action  in  health,  so  also  may  they 
act  independently  in  disease ;  and  as  in  health  there  is  co-ordinate 
or  designed  sensori-motor  action,  so  in  disease  may  there  be 
convulsive  sensori-motor  action  evincing  more  or  less  co-ordina- 
tion 01  design.     Of  violent,  but  more  or  less  co-ordinate,  action 


rv.]  SENSORY  GANGLIA,  ETC.  101 

we  have,  I  think,  a  good  example  in  the  raving  and  dangerous 
fury  which  often  follows  a  succession  of  severe  epileptic  fits,  and 
which  I  take  leave  to  describe  as  in  great  part  a  true  sensorial 
insanity.  The  patient's  senses  are  possessed  with  hallucinations, 
their  ganglionic  central  cells  in  a  state  of  convulsive  action; 
before  the  eyes  are  blood-red  flames  of  fire,  amidst  which  whoso- 
ever happens  to  present  himself,  appears  as  a  devil,  or  otherwise 
horribly  transformed  ;  the  ears  are  filled  with  a  terrible  roaring 
noise,  or  resound  with  a  voice  imperatively  commanding  him  to 
save  himself;  the  smell  is  perhaps  one  of  sulphurous  stifling 
and  the  desperate  and  violent  actions  are,  like  the  furious  acts 
of  the  elephant,  the  convulsive  re-actions  to  such  fearful  halluci- 
nations. The  individual  in  such  state  is  a  machine  set  in 
destructive  motion,  and  he  perpetrates  the  extremest  violence  or 
the  most  desperate  murder  without  consciousness  at  the  time, 
and  without  memory  of  it  afterwards.  When  we  come  to  the 
general  pathology  of  insanity,  we  shall  have  more  to  say  upon 
this  matter. 

A  deficiency  of  healthy  blood  is  a  cause  of  disorder  of  the 
sensory  centres.  A  great  loss  of  blood  powerfully  affects  the 
senses ;  the  anaemia  of  chlorotic  and  hysterical  women  is  the 
probable  cause  of  the  many  anomalous  sensations  and  motor 
disturbances,  which  disappear  as  the  condition  of  the  blood  im- 
proves ;  and  a  manifest  poverty  of  blood  often  accompanies  the 
chorea  of  children  with  its  hallucinations. 

A  perverted  condition  of  the  blood,  whether  from  something 
bred  in  the  body  or  introduced  from  without,  is  recognised  as  a 
powerful  cause  of  sensory  disorder.  Evidence  of  such  injurious 
influence  we  have  in  the  hallucinations  which  sometimes  follow 
for  a  time  certain  acute  diseases,  as  well  in  the  delirium  which 
occurs  in  the  course  of  them  ;  in  the  effects  which  alcohol  pro- 
duces upon  the  senses  :  in  the  actions  of  poisons,  such  as  bella- 
donna and  aconite,  which  markedly  affect  the  senses ;  and 
especially  in  the  operation  of  haschisch,  a  poison  which  appears 
to  concentrate  its  action  upon  the  sensorium  commune.  In 
hydrophobia  the  presence  of  a  virus  in  the  blood  notably  gives 
rise  to  most  violent  nervous  disturbance  ;  the  sight  or  sound  of 
a  fluid,  a  movement  in  the  room,  or  a  current  of  air,  being  suffi- 
cient to  excite  terrible  convulsions. 


102  SECONDARY  NERFOUS  CENTRES;  OR,  [CHAP 

4.  An  irritation  operating  by  reflex  action  is  undoubtedly  the 
occasional  cause  of  sensorial  disturbance.  Pressure  upon  or 
wound  of  a  sensitive  nerve  has  sometimes  produced  extensive 
paralysis  of  sensibility ;  a  bad  tooth  may  notably  give  rise  to 
amaurosis ;  vertigo,  hallucinations,  and  illusions  are  now  and 
then  plainly  the  result  of  an  irritation  proceeding  from  a  centri- 
petal nerve,  not  perhaps  felt  in  any  other  way  than  as  it  is 
testified  by  effects  which  disappear  with  the  removal  of  the  irri- 
tation. An  interesting  example  of  severe  disturbance  of  the 
nervous  centres  from  a  slight  eccentric  irritation,  is  related  by 
Dr.  Brown-Sequard,  to  whom  it  was  communicated  by  Mr. 
C.  De  Morgan.  A  lad,  aged  fourteen,  as  he  was  getting  up  in 
the  morning,  was  heard  by  his  father  to  be  making  a  great  noise 
in  his  bedroom.  On  the  latter  rushing  into  the  room,  he  found 
his  son  in  his  shirt,  violently  agitated,  talking  incoherently,  and 
breaking  to  pieces  the  furniture.  His  father  caught  hold  of  him 
and  put  him  back  into  bed,  where  at  once  the  boy  became  com- 
posed, but  did  not  seem  at  all  conscious  of  what  he  had  done. 
On  getting  out  of  bed  he  had  felt  something  odd,  he  said,  but  he 
was  quite  well.  A  surgeon,  who  was  sent  for,  found  him  still 
reading  quietly,  with  clean  tongue  and  cheerful  countenance,  and 
wishful  to  get  up.  He  had  never  had  epilepsy,  but  had  enjoyed 
good  health  hitherto.  He  was  told  to  get  up ;  but  on  putting 
his  feet  on  the  floor,  and  standing  up,  his  countenance  instantly 
changed,  the  jaw  became  violently  convulsed,  and  he  was  about 
to  rush  forward,  when  he  was  seized,  and  pushed  back  on  to  the 
bed.  At  once  he  became  calm  again,  said  he  had  felt  odd,  but 
was  surprised  when  asked  what  was  the  matter  with  him.  He 
had  been  fishing  on  the  previous  day,  and  having  got  his  line 
entangled,  had  waded  into  the  river  to  disengage  it,  but  was  not 
aware  that  he  had  hurt  his  feet  in  any  way, — that  he  had  even 
scratched  them.  "  But  on  holding  up  the  right  great  toe  with 
rny  finger  and  thumb,  to  examine  the  sole  of  the  foot,  the  leg 
was  drawn  up,  and  the  muscles  of  the  jaw  were  suddenly  con- 
vulsed, and  on  letting  go  the  toe  these  effects  instantly  ceased." 
There  was  no  redness,  no  swelling,  but  on  the  bulb  of  the  toe  a 
small  elevation,  as  if  a  bit  of  gravel,  less  than  the  head  of  a  pin, 
had  been  pressed  beneath  the  cuticle.  On  compressing  this 
against  the  nail  cautiously,  a  slight  convulsion  ensued;  there 


iv.]  SENSORY  GANGLIA,  ITC.  103 

was  no  pricking  when  pressed,  but  he  said  something  made  him 
feel  very  odd.  The  slightly  raised  part  was  clipped  away ;  no 
gravel  was  found,  but  the  strange  sensation  was  gone,  and  never 
returned.* 

The  general  bodily  feeling  which  results  from  the  sum  of  the 
different  organic  processes  is  not  attended  with  any  definite 
consciousness,  or  idea,  of  the  causes  that  give  rise  to  it;  the 
organic  stimuli  are,  in  fact,  organically  felt,  but  do  not  in  the 
natural  state  of  health  excite,  as  a  stimulus  to  one  of  the  special 
senses  does,  a  particular  state  of  consciousness  ;  and  when  the 
organic  stimuli  do  force  themselves  into  consciousness,  as 
happens  in  disease,  then  it  is  in  pain  that  their  action  is  felt. 
In  respect  of  our  organic  feeling  we  are,  in  reality,  not  unlike 
those  humble  animals  that  have  a  general  sensibility  without 
any  organs  for  special  discrimination  and  comparison.  Having 
no  idea  of  the  particular  cause  of  any  modification  in  this 
general  feeling,  we  are  plainly  most  favourably  placed  for  the 
generation  of  illusions  with  regard  to  the  cause.  Consequently 
it  is  not  surprising  to  find  that  the  insane  frequently  have 
extravagant  hallucinations  and  illusions  respecting  the  cause  of 
an  abnormal  sensation,  which  is  actually  due  to  a  morbid  state  of 
some  internal  organ ;  they  think  to  interpret  it  as  its  unusual 
character  seems  to  demand,  and  in  accordance  with  their 
experience  of  the  definite  perceptions  of  the  special  senses  ; 
and  accordingly  they  attribute  the  anomalous  feeling  to  frogs, 
serpents,  or  other  such  creatures  that  have  got  into  their 
insides. 

5.  Whether  any  beneficial  influence  is  exerted  upon  the 
nutrition  of  the  nervous  centres  of  the  sensorium  commune  by 
the  centres  that  lie  above  it,  must  remain  uncertain.  No  trust- 
worthy conclusions  can  be  drawn  from  experiments  in  which  the 
cerebral  hemispheres  have  been  removed,  for  the  mischief  done 
is  far  too  great  to  warrant  any  inference.  It  is  certain  that  a 
centre  of  morbid  activity  in  the  cerebral  hemispheres  may  act 
injuriously  upon  the  sensory  centres,  and  give  rise  to  secondary 
derangement  of  their  functions ;  but  the  result  is  then  most 
likely  due  to  reflex  or  sympathetic  action,  the  morbid  centre 

*  Lectures  on  the  Physiology  and  Pathology  of  the  Central  Nervous  System, 
by  Dr.  Brown-Sequard,  1860. 


104  SECONDARY  NERFOUS  CENTRES;  OR,  [CHAP. 

acting  as  the  morbid  centre  in  another  internal  organ  notably 
does. 

In  concluding  this  account  of  the  sensory  nervous  centres,  we 
have  only  to  add  that  a  review  of  their  relations  and  functions 
does  certainly  establish  a  close  analogy  with  the  relations  and 
functions  of  the  spinal  centres.  In  both  cases  there  are  nervous 
centres  which  have  the  power  of  independent  reaction,  though 
they  are  usually  subordinated  to  the  action  of  higher  centres ; 
in  both  cases  the  faculties  are  for  the  most  part  organized  in 
relation  to  outward  circumstances  through  the  plastic  power  of 
the  nervous  centres  ;  and,  in  both  cases,  the  independent  power 
of  action  of  the  centres  may,  by  reason  of  disease,  be  exhibited 
in  violent  demonstration.  The  convulsive  paroxysm  which 
seizes  on  the  cells  of  the  seiisormm  commune,  and  drives  the 
furious  epileptic  on  to  desperate  violence,  is  as  little  within  his 
control  as  is  the  convulsion  of  his  limbs  that  is  owing  to 
disease  of  the  spinal  cord. 

NOTES. 

1  (p.  89). — It  ought  not  to  be  forgotten  that  Dr.  Darwin  distinguished 
voluntary  from  sensori-motor  movements.  "  Many  common  actions  of 
life  are  produced  in  a  similar  manner  (i.e.  by  sensation).  If  a  fly 
settle  on  my  forehead,  whilst  I  am  intent  on  my  present  occupation,  I 
dislodge  it  with  my  finger  without  exciting  my  attention  or  breaking 
the  train  of  my  ideas." — Zoonomia,  vol.  i.  p.  40.  "  Other  muscular 
motions,  that  are  most  frequently  connected  with,  our  sensations,  as 
those  of  the  sphincter  of  the  bladder  and  anus,  and  the  musculi 
erectores  penis,  were  originally  excited  into  motion  by  irritation,  for 
young  children  make  water,  and  have  other  evacuations,  without 
attention  to  these  circumstances — '  et  primis  etiam  ab  incunabulis 
tenduntur  saepius  puerorum  penes,  amore  nondum  expergefacto.'  So 
the  nipples  of  young  women  are  liable  to  become  turgid  by  irritation, 
long  before  they  are  in  a  situation  to  be  excited  by  the  pleasure  of 
giving  milk  to  the  lips  of  a  child." — Ibid.,  p.  38.  "There  is  a 
criterion  by  which  we  may  distinguish  our  voluntary  acts  or  thoughts 
from  those  that  are  excited  by  our  sensations.  The  former  are  always 
employed  about  the  means  to  acquire  pleasurable  objects,  or  to  avoid 
painful  ones ;  while  the  latter  are  employed  about  the  possession  of 
those  that  are  already  in  our  power."  And  he  goes  on  to  say  that  the 


iv.]  SENSORY  GANGLIA,  ETC.  105 

ideas  and  actions  of  brutes,  like  those  of  children,  are  almost  per- 
petually produced  by  their  present  pleasure  or  their  present  pains ; 
they  seldom  busy  themselves  about  the  means  of  procuring  future 
bliss  or  avoiding  future  misery. — Ibid.,  vol.  i.  p.  184. 

2  (p.  91). — Alciphron  : — 

"  If  vision  be  only  a  language  speaking  to  the  eyes,  it  may  be  asked, 
when  did  men  learn  this  language  1  To  acquire  the  knowledge  of  so 
many  signs  as  go  to  the  making  up  a  language,  is  a  work  of  some 
difficulty.  But  will  any  one  say  he  hath  spent  time,  or  been  at  pains, 
to  learn  this  language  ? " 

Euphranor  : — 

"  No  wonder  we  cannot  assign  a  time  beyond  our  remotest  memory. 
If  we  have  been  all  practising  this  language  ever  since  our  first 
entrance  into  the  world — if  the  author  of  nature  constantly  speaks  to 
the  eyes  of  all  mankind,  even  in  their  earliest  infancy,  whenever  their 
eyes  are  open  in  the  light,  whether  alone  or  in  company,  it  doth  not 
seem  to  be  at  all  strange  that  men  should  not  be  aware  that  they  had 
ever  learned  a  language  begun  so  early,  and  practised  so  constantly  as 
this  of  vision.  And  if  we  also  consider  that  it  is  the  same  throughout 
the  whole  world,  and  not  like  other  languages,  differing  in  different 
places,  it  will  not  seem  unaccountable  that  man  should  mistake  the 
connexion  between  the  proper  objects  of  sight  and  the  things  signified 
by  them  to  be  founded  in  necessary  relation,  or  likeness,  or  that  they 
should  even  take  them  for  the  same  things.  Hence  it  seems  easy  to 
conceive  why  men,  who  do  not  think,  should  confound  in  this  language 
of  vision  the  signs  with  the  things  signified,  otherwise  than  they  are 
wont  to  do  in  the  various  particular  languages  formed  by  the  several 
nations  of  men." — Bishop  Berkeley's  Minute  Philosopher,  vol.  L  p.  393. 


CHAPTEE  V. 

HEMISPHERICAL  GANGLIA;  CORTICAL  CELLS  OF  THE  CEREBRAL 
HEMISPHERES;  IDEATIONAL  NERVOUS  CENTRES;*  PRIMARY 
NERFOUS  CENTRES;  INTELLECTORIUM  COMMUNE. 

mHAT  the  uerve-cells  which  exist  in  countless  numbers  in  the 
-*-  grey  cortical  layers  of  the  hemispheres,  are  the  nervous  centres 
of  ideas,  is  fully  admitted  by  all  those  who  have  most  studied 
the  physiology  of  the  brain,  and  are  best  entitled  to  speak  on 
the  matter.  The  cerebral  hemispheres  represent,  in  reality,  two 
large  ganglia  that  lie  above  the  sensory  centres,  and  are  super- 
added  in  man  and  the  higher  animals  for  the  further  fashioning 
of  impressions,  or  of  sensory  perceptions,  into  ideas  or  conceptions, 
for  that  recreation  of  nature  by  abstraction  of  the  essential  from 
the  particular,  and  its  re-embodiment  in  idea — that  epigenetic 
development  of  nature,  if  I  might  so  speak — in  which  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  human  mind  really  consists.  Looking  not  at  the 
individual  man  and  his  work  as  the  end,  but  looking  at  him  as 
a  small  and  subordinate  part  of  the  vast  and  harmonious  whole, 
as  a  means  to  a  far-off  end,  it  is  sufficiently  evident  that  the 
history  of  mankind  is  the  history  of  the  latest  organic  develop- 
ment of  nature — that  in  the  evolution  of  the  human  mind 
nature  is  undergoing  its  consummate  development  through  man. 
And  the  law  manifest  in  this  highest  display  of  organic  develop- 
ment, is  still  that  law  of  progressive  specialization  and  increasing 
complexity  which  has  been  traceable  through  the  long  chain  of 
organic  beings.  So  exquisitely  delicate,  however,  are  the  organic 

*  "We  have  not  a  name  for  that  complex  notion  which  embraces,  as  one  whole, 
all  the  different  phenomena  to  which  the  term  '  Idea '  relates.  As  we  say  '  Sen- 
sation,' we  might  also  say,  '  Ideation ; '  it  would  be  a  very  useful  word  ;  and 
there  is  no  objection  to  it,  except  the  pedantic  habit  of  decrying  a  new  term." 
— James  Mill,  Analysis  of  the  Human  Afind,  p.  42. 


CHAP,  v.]  HEMISPHERICAL  GANGLIA,  ETC, 

processes  of  mental  development  which  take  place  in  the  minute 
cells  of  the  cortical  layers,  that  they  are  certainly,  so  far  as  our 
present  means  of  investigation  reach,  quite  impenetrable  to  the 
senses ;  they  are  like  nebulae  which  no  telescope  can  yet 
resolve. 

The  anatomists  believe  that  they  have  now  demonstrated  that 
the  nerve  fibres  which  ascend  from  the  spinal  cord  through  the 
medulla  oblongata  do  not  pass  directly  to  the  surface  of  the 
hemispheres,  but  end  in  the  ganglionic  cells  of  the  corpora 
striata  ;  new  fibres  starting  from  these  cells,  and  radiating  to  the 
cortical  cells,  to  establish  the  communication  between  the  primary 
and  secondary  nervous  centres.      There  is,  then,  a  sufficient 
anatomical  reason  for  an  inference  previously  made  on  other 
grounds,  which  is,  that  an  idea,  or  an  impulse  of  the  will,  cannot 
act  directly  upon  the  motor  nerve  fibres  of  the  body,  but  only 
through  the  medium  of  the  proper  subordinate  centres.     It  is 
extremely  probable,   again,  that  different  convolutions  of  the 
brain  do  subserve  different  functions  in  our  mental  life;  but 
tho  precise  mapping  out  of  the  cerebral  surface,  and  the  classifi- 
cation of  the  mental  faculties,  which  the  phrenologists  have 
rashly  made,  will  not  bear  scientific  examination.     That  the 
broad  and  prominent  forehead  indicates  great  intellectual  power 
was  believed  in  Greece,  and  is  commonly  accepted  as  true  now  ; 
the  examination  of  the  brains  of  animals  and  idiots,  and  the 
comparison  of  the  brain  of  the  lowest  savage  with  the  brain  of 
the  civilized  European,  certainly  tend  to  strengthen  the  belief. 
Narrow  and  pointed  hemispheres  assuredly  do  mark  an  approach 
to  the  character  of  the  monkey's  brain.     There  is  some  reason 
to  believe  also,  that  the  upper  part  of  the  brain  and  the  posterior 
lobes  have  more  to  do  with  feeling  than  with  the  understanding. 
Huschke  has  found  these  parts  to  be  proportionately  more  de- 
veloped in  women   than   in    men ;    and    Schroeder  van    der 
Kolk  thought  that  his  pathological  researches  had  afforded  him 
the  most  convincing  proofs  that  the  anterior  lobes  of  the  brain 
were  the  seat  of  the  higher  intellectual  faculties,  while  the  upper 
and   posterior  lobes  ministered   rather  to  the   emotional  life. 
Recently  some  observations  have  been  made  with  the  view  of 
establishing  a  theory,  that  a  portion  of  the  anterior  lobe,  the 
third  frontal  convolution  of  the  left  hemisphere,  was  the  seat  of 


108  HEMISPHERICAL  GANGLIA;  OR,  [CHAP. 

language ;  but  the  observations  reported  are  unsatisfactory, 
directly  contradictory  observations  are  overlooked,  and  it  is 
contrary  to  the  first  principles  of  psychology  to  suppose  that 
language,  complex  and  organic  as  it  is  in  its  intellectual 
character  as  the  sign  or  symbol  of  the  idea,  can  have  so  limited 
and  defined  a  seat  in  the  brain.  On  the  whole,  it  must  be  con- 
fessed that,  so  far,  we  have  not  any  certain  and  definite  know- 
ledge of  the  functions  of  the  different  parts  of  the  cerebral 
convolutions.  The  anatomists  cannot  even  agree  on  any  convo- 
lution as  peculiar  to  man  ;  all  that  they  can  surely  say  is,  that 
his  convolutions  are  more  complex  and  less  symmetrical  than 
those  of  the  monkey.  "  If  man  was  made  in  the  image  of  God, 
he  was  also  made  in  the  image  of  an  ape."* 

The  cortical  cells  of  the  hemispheres,  like  the  ganglionic  cells 
of  the  sensory  centres  and  of  the  spinal  cord,  may  certainly  act 
as  nervous  centres  of  independent  reaction.  Without  any  vo- 
lition, or  even  in  direct  defiance  of  volitional  effort,  an  idea 
which  has  become  active  may  pass  outwards,  and  produce  move- 
ment, or  some  other  effect  upon  the  body.  The  suddenly  excited 
idea  of  the  ludicrous,  for  example,  causes  involuntary  laughter ; 
the  idea  of  an  insult,  a  quick  movement  of  retaliation  ;  the  idea 
of  a  beautiful  woman,  a  glow  of  amatorial  passion ;  the  idea  of  a 
great  impending  danger,  or  of  a  sudden  terrible  affliction,  serious 
or  even  fatal  disturbance  of  the  organic  life ;  the  idea  of  an 
object,  sometimes  an  actual  hallucination.  Most  of  the  earlier 
actions  of  children  are  prompted  by  ideas  and  feelings  that  are 
excited  by  suggestions  from  without,  and  immediately  react 
outwards.  In  the  phenomena  of  electro-biology  or  hypnotism, 
the  mind  of  the  patient  is  possessed  with  the  ideas  which  the 
operator  suggests,  and  his  body  becomes  an  automatic  machine, 
set  in  motion  by  them.  Every  one's  experience  will  recall  to 
him  occasions  on  which  an  idea  excited  in  his  mind  could  not 
be  dismissed  therefrom  by  the  will,  and  perhaps  would  not  let 
him  rest  until  he  had  realized  it  in  action,  even  though  such 

'  O 

realisation  appeared  to  his  judgment  inadvisable.  Those  who 
have  attended  carefully  to  the  course  of  their  own  thoughts,  and 
reflected  upon  their  actions,  will  readily  acknowledge  that  an 
idea  sometimes  arises  and  produces  a  movement  without  there 

*  Hallam,  liitroduction  to  History  of  Europe. 


v.  IDEATIONAL  CENTRES.  109 

having  been  any  active  consciousness  of  it,  the  effect  being  that 
which  first  arouses  consciousness,  if  it  is  aroused  at  all  How 
many  of  the  daily  actions  of  life,  thus  accomplished,  are  we 
never  conscious  of  unless  we  set  ourselves  deliberately  to  reflect. 
It  is  most  certain  that  there  may  be  a  reaction  outwards  of  an 
ideational  nerve  cell,  independently  of  volition,  and  even  with- 
out consciousness. 

As  it  was  with  the  faculties  of  the  spinal  and  sensory  centres, 
so  is  it  with  the  faculties  of  the  ideational  centres  :  they  are  not 
innate.  The  notion  of  innate  idea,  in  the  exact  meaning  of  the 
word,  as  connatural  or  contemporary  with  birth,  is  not  less  un- 
tenable and  absurd  than  an  innate  pregnancy.^)  But  if  by 
innate  is  only  meant  that,  by  the  necessity  of  his  nature,  a 
well-constituted  individual  placed  in  certain  circumstances  will 
acquire  certain  ideas,  then  all  the  phenomena  of  a  man's  life, 
bodily  or  mental,  are  just  as  innate  or  natural.  It  is  necessary 
here  to  distinguish  between  what  is  predetermined  by  the  nature 
of  things,  and  what  is  preformed.  The  formation  of  an  idea  is 
an  organic  evolution  in  the  appropriate  nervous  centres,  a  de- 
velopment which  is  gradually  completed  in  consequence  of 
successive  experiences  of  a  like  kind.  The  impressions  of  the 
different  properties  or  qualities  of  an  object  received  through  the 
different  senses,  are  combined  in  the  compound  idea  of  it  which 
is  gradually  matured  in  the  mind,  and  henceforth  we  can  make 
assertions  concerning  it  as  a  unity,  when  it  is  not  present  to 
sense.  The  cells  of  the  cerebral  ganglia  do,  in  reality,  idealize  the 
sensory  perceptions  ;  grasping  that  which  is  essential  in  them, 
and  suppressing  or  rejecting  the  unessential,  they  mould  them  by 
their  plastic  faculty  into  organic  unity  of  an  idea,  in  accordance 
with  fundamental  laws.  Every  idea  is  thus  an  intuition,  and 
implicitly  comprises  far  more  than  could  be  explicitly  dis- 
played in  it.  Herein  the  process  of  ideation  only  follows  the 
law  of  organic  development  as  manifest  everywhere,  and  as  pre- 
viously illustrated  in  the  development  of  nervous  element  itself. 
Whosoever,  biassed  by  the  metaphysical  conception  of  mind, 
finds  it  difficult  to  realize  this  process  of  the  organic  growth  of 
idea,  let  him  reflect  upon  the  manner  of  organic  growth  which 
confessedly  takes  place  in  the  language  in  which  our  ideas  get 
embodiment.  As  language  is  not  innate,  but  a  slow  development 


110  HEMISPHERICAL  GANGLIA;   OR,  [CHAP. 

through  the  ages,  in  conformity  with  the  development  of  thought, 
•we  may  make  use  of  the  science  of  what  is  seen,  as  evidence  of 
processes  that  at  present  are  unseen,  and  use  the  study  of  lan- 
guage as  an  instrument  of  the  analysis  of  ideas. 

Those*  who  are  metaphysically  minded  have  done  with  idea  as 
they  have  done  with  sensation :  they  have  converted  a  general 
term  summing  up  a  great  number  of  varied  phenomena  into  an 
actual  entity,  and  thenceforth  allowed  it  to  tyrannize  over  the 
thoughts.  It  is  a  great  and  mischievous  error  to  suppose  that 
an  idea  of  the  same  ohject  or  event  has  always  a  uniform  quanti- 
tative and  qualitative  value  ;  and  the  way  in  which  it  is  the 
custom  to  speak  of  certain  abstract  ideas,  as  if  they  were  constant 
entities  admitting  of  no  variation,  nor  of  the  shadow  of  a  change, 
is  a  remarkable  example  of  that  self-deception  by  which  man 
fondly  fools  himself  "  with  many  words  making  nothing  under- 
stood." An  idea  may  be  definite,  clear,  and  adequate,  or  it  may 
be  indefinite,  obscure  and  inadequate;  and  it  by  no  means 
follows,  therefore,  that  because  the  same  name  is  given  to  an 
idea  in  two  people,  it  has  the  same  value  in  each.  Certain  ideas 
will  always  have  a  different  value  in  persons  at  a  different  stage 
of  cultivation ;  and  when  the  well-meaning  traveller,  or  the 
ardent  missionary  thinks  to  find  in  the  miserable  savage  the  idea 
of  a  god,  he  should  take  heed  that  he  is  not  erroneously  inter- 
preting the  savage  mind  by  the  text  of  his  own.  The  ideas  of 
virtue  and  vice,  for  which  the  Australian  savage  confessedly  has 
no  words  in  his  language,  cannot  be  implanted  or  organized  in 
his  mind,  until,  by  cultivation  continued  through  generations, 
he  has  been  humanized  and  civilized.  (2) 

To  acquire  those  so-called  fundamental  ideas,  universal  in- 
tuitions, or  categories  of  the  understanding,  of  which  some  meta- 
physicians make  so  much,  as  constant  elements,  though  they 
differ  greatly  in  value  in  different  people,  there  is  no  other  need 
but,  using  Hobbes'  words,  "  to  be  born  a  man,  and  live  with  the 
use  of  his  five  senses."  (3)  Because  all  men  have  a  common  nature, 
and  because  the  nature  by  which  all  men  are  surrounded  is  the 
same,  there  are  developed  certain  ideas  which  have  a  universal 
application,  but  they  are  nowise  independent  of  experience  ;  on 
the  contrary,  the  universality  of  their  character  is  owing  to  the 
very  fact  that  in  every  experience  they  are  implicitly  suggested 


r.]  IDEATIONAL  CENTRES.  \  \  \ 

or  prompted,  so  that  they  finally  become  fixed  as  endowments 
in  the  acquired  nature  or  organization  of  the  nervous  centres  ; 
conscious  acquisition  becoming  here,  as  elsewhere,  unconscious 
faculty,  by  virtue  of  an  organic  process.  But  their  absolute 
truth,  as  expressions  of  certain  fundamental  relations  between 
man  and  nature,  is  only  guaranteed  by  the  assumption  of  an  un- 
changing persistence  of  these  relations ;  a  new  sense  conferred 
upon  him  would  entirely  change  the  aspect  of  things,  and  render 
accessary  a  new  order  of  fundamental  ideas  *  (4) 

Having  said  thus  much  concerning  the  manner  in  which  our 
ideas  are  acquired,  I  proceed  to  indicate  the  different  ways  in 
which  the  reaction  of  an  idea,  when  active,  may  be  displayed : 
having  considered  idea  as  statical,  it  now  remains  to  consider  it 
in  actual  energy. 

a,  The  reflex  action  or  reaction  of  an  ideational  nerve-cell 
may  be  downwards  upon  the  motor  centres,  and  may  thus  give 
rise  to  what  has  been  called  ideomotor  movements,  t  The  energy 
may  be  exerted  either  upon  the  involuntary  or  upon  the  volun- 
tary muscles ;  and  in  the  latter  case,  it  takes  place  either  with 
consciousness  or  without  consciousness.  The  idea  that  the  bowels 
will  act  may  notably  sometimes  so  affect  their  involuntary 
peristaltic  movements  as  to  produce  evacuation  of  them;  the 
idea  that  vomiting  must  take  place,  when  a  qualmish  feeling 
exists,  will  certainly  hasten  vomiting ;  the  idea  of  a  nervous  man 

*  "  We  can  conceive  ourselves  as  endowed  with  smelling  and  not  enjoying  any 
other  faculty.  In  that  case,  we  should  have  no  idea  of  objects  as  seeable,  as  bearable, 
as  touchable,  or  tasteable.  We  should  have  a  train  of  smells  ;  the  smell  at  one 
time  of  the  rose,  at  another  of  the  violet,  at  another  of  carrion,  and  so  on.  Our 
life  would  be  a  train  of  smells."— J.  Mill,  Analysis  of  the  Human  Mind. 

t  "  To  prove  that  Ideas,  as  well  as  Sensations,  are  the  cause  of  muscular  actions, 
it  is  necessary  to  make  choice  of  cases  in  which  the  Idea  is  in  no  danger  of  being 
confounded  with  that  state  of  mind  called  the  "Will.  And  hardly  any  case  will 
answer  this  condition,  except  some  of  those  which  are  held  to  be  involuntary,  for 
the  Idea  itself  never  can  be  very  clearly  distinguished  from  the  "Will." — J.  Mill, 
op.  cit.  p.  265.  He  instances  yawning  on  seeing  some  one  yawn,  the  infectious 
power  of  convulsions,  laughter,  sobbing,  the  swallowing  of  saliva,  if  assured  that 
you  cannot.  "  It  seems,  therefore,  to  be  established  by  a  simple  induction,  that 
muscular  actions  follow  ideas,  as  invariable,  antecedent  and  consequent,  in  other 
words,  as  cause  and  effect ;  that,  whenever  we  have  obtained  a  command  over  the 
ideas,  we  have  also  obtained  a  command  over  the  motions  ;  and  that  we  cannot 
perform  associate  contractions  of  several  muscles,  till  we  have  established,  by 
repetition,  the  readyassociation  of  the  ideas. " — Ibid.  p.  274. 


112  HEMISPHERICAL  GANGLIA;    OR,  [CHAP. 

that  lie  cannot  effect  sexual  intercourse  assuredly  may  incapaci- 
tate him  from  copulation  ;  and  there  is  a  very  remarkable 
instance  told  in  the  Philosophical  Transactions  of  a  man  who 
could  for  a  time  stop  the  motions  of  his  heart.*  These  are 
examples  of  the  influence  of  idea  upon  the  involuntary  muscles, 
and  they  are  conformable  to  what  has  been  previously  said  of 
the  subordination  of  the  quaternary  or  organic  nervous  centres 
to  the  cerebro-spinal  system.  Some  people  even  are  able,  through 
a  vivid  idea  of  shuddering,  or  of  something  creeping  over  their 
skin,  to  produce  a  cutis  anserina,  or  goose's  skin :  the  immediate 
effect  of  the  idea  in  this  case,  however,  is  probably  to  excite  the 
appropriate  sensation  which  thereupon  gives  rise  to  the  sequent 
phenomena.  Examples  of  the  action  of  idea  upon  our  voluntary 
muscles  are  witnessed  in  every  hour  of  our  waking  life.  Very 
few,  in  fact,  of  the  familiar  acts  of  a  day  do  call  the  will  into 
action :  when  not  sensori-motor  they  are  mostly  prompted  by 
an  idea.  But  the  point  on  which  I  would  lay  stress  here  is, 
that  such  ideomotor  movements  may  take  place,  not  only  with- 
out any  intervention  of  the  will,  but  also  without  consciousness : 
they  are  automatically  accomplished,  like  the  actions  of  the  sleep- 
walker, in  obedience  to  an  idea  or  series  of  ideas,  of  which  there 
is  no  active  consciousness.  It  may  seem  paradoxical  to  assert, 
not  merely  that  ideas  may  exist  in  the  mind  without  any  con- 
sciousness of  them — which  every  one  admits  in  their  dormant, 
latent,  or  statical  condition  they  may — but  that  an  idea,  or  a 
train  of  associated  ideas,  may  be  quickened  into  action,  and 
excite  movements,  without  themselves  being  attended  to.  But 
it  is  unquestionably  so  :  a  great  part  of  the  chain  of  our  waking 
thoughts,  and  of  the  series  of  our  daily  actions,  actually  never 
is  attended  to :  at  first  consciously  acquired,  these  have  now 
become  automatic.  Persons  who  have  a  habit  of  talking  to 
themselves  are  generally  unaware  that  they  are  talking,  and 
yet  they  are  performing  both  associate  ideas  and  associate 
movements. 


*  "  There  is  an  instance  told  in  the  Philosophical  Transactions  of  a  man  who 
could  for  a  time  stop  the  motions  of  his  heart  when  he  pleased  ;  and  Mr.  D.  has 
often  told  me  he  could  so  far  increase  the  peristaltic  motion  of  his  bowels  by 
voluntary  efforts  as  to  produce  an  evacuation  by  a  stool  at  any  time  in  half-an- 
hour." — Zoononria,  vol.  i.  p.  39. 


v.]  IDEATION AL  CENTRES.  j]3 

It  is  surprising  how  uncomfortable  any  one  may  1  e  made  by 
the  obscure  notion  of  something  which  he  ought  to  have  said 
or  done,  but  did  not,  and  which  he  cannot  for  the  life  of  him 
now  remember.  There  is  a  dim  feeling  of  some  impulse  unsatis- 
fied, an  effort,  as  it  were,,  of  the  lost  idea  to  get  into  conscious- 
ness —a  certain  activity  of  it  not  sufficient  to  excite  consciousness, 
but  sufficient  to  react  upon  the  unconscious  mental  life,  and  to 
produce  a  feeling  of  discomfort  or  vague  unrest,  which  is  relieved 
directly  the  idea  bursts  into  consciousness.  Then,  again,  when 
an  active  idea  has  once  taken  firm  possession  of  consciousness, 
how  hard  a  matter  it  is  to  dismiss  it !  Some  weak-minded 
persons  cannot  do  so  until  they  have  expended  its  force  in 
suitable  action  :  let  a  hysterical  woman  get  a  vivid  idea  of  some 
action  that  she  must  do :  the  idea  becomes  a  fate  which  she 
must  sooner  or  later  obey,  not  otherwise  than  as  in  electro- 
biology  or  hypnotism  the  patient  is  governed  by  the  idea  which 
the  operator  suggests.  Let  a  quick-tempered  man  conceive  a 
great  insult  suddenly  done  to  him :  in  a  moment,  without  any 
intervention  of  the  will,  the  idea  reacts  upon  the  muscles  of  his 
body,  and  produces  more  or  less  general  tension  of  them.  Let 
a  man  engaged  in  a  fight  get  the  idea  that  he  will  be  beaten  :  his 
muscular  energy  is  weakened,  and  he  is  already  half  conquered. 

(&)  The  reflex  action  of  an  ideational  nerve-cell  may  operate 
not  only  downwards  upon  the  muscular  system,  but  also  down- 
wards upon  the  sensory  ganglia.  As  the  idea  is  excited  into 
activity  by  the  impression  on  the  senses,  so  it  may  in  turn  react 
downwards  upon  the  sensory  centres,  giving  rise  even  under 
certain  circumstances  to  illusions  and  hallucinations.  The  idea 
of  a  nauseous  taste  may  excite  the  sensation  to  such  a  degree  as 
to  produce  vomiting  ;  the  sight  of  a  person  about  to  run  a  sharp 
instrument  over  glass  will  set  the  teeth  on  edge  ;  the  images  of 
dreams  are  sometimes,  as  Spinoza  has  remarked,  really  visible 
for  a  while  after  the  eyes  are  open.  The  celebrated  Baron  von 
Swieten,  says  Dr.  Darwin,  who  illustrates  this  kind  of  ideational 
action  by  many  instances,  "  was  present  when  the  putrid  carcase 
of  a  dead  dog  exploded  with  prodigious  stench  ;  and,  some  years 
afterwards,  accidentally  riding  along  the  same  road,  he  was 
thrown  into  the  same  sickness  and  vomiting  by  the  idea  of  the 
stench,  as  he  had  before  experienced  from  the  perception  of  it." 
9 


114  HEMISPHERICAL  GANGLIA;   OR,  [CHAP. 

The  action  of  idea  upon  our  sensory  ganglia  is  a  regular  part 
of  our  mental  life ;  for  the  co-operation  of  sensory  activity  is 
nothing  less  than  necessary  to  clear  conception  and  representa- 
tion. In  order  to  form  a  distinct  and  definite  conception  of  what 
is  not  present  to  sense,  we  are  compelled  to  form  some  sort  of 
image  of  it  in  the  mind ;  the  sense  of  sight,  which  anatomically 
is  in  most  extensive  connection  with  the  cerebral  ganglia,  afford- 
ing us  the  -greatest  assistance  in  this  regard.  Men  differ  much 
in  the  power  which  they  have  of  thus  rendering  an  idea  sensible. 
Goethe  could  call  up  an  image  at  will,  and  make  it  undergo 
various  transformations,  as  it  were,  before  his  eyes ;  Shelley 
appears  to  have  been  on  one  occasion,  at  least,  the  victim  of 
positive  hallucinations  generated  by  his  ideas.  But  the  most 
remarkable  instance  of  a  habit  of  seeing  his  own  ideas  as  actual 
images  was  afforded  by  the  engraver,  "William  Blake.  "  You 
have  only  to  work  up  imagination  to  the  state  of  vision,  and  the 
thing  is  done,"  was  his  own  account  of  the  genesis  of  his  visions.* 
To  render  definite  the  creations  of  the  imagination,  and  to  give 
fit  expressions  to  them,  some  sensible  image  of  them  must  be 
represented  to  the  mind.  The  great  writers  whose  vivid  descrip- 
tions of  scenery  or  events  hold  our  attention  and  stir  our  feelings, 
have  this  power  in  high  degree ;  they  create  for  themselves  a 
world  of  sense  by  the  influence  of  idea,  and  then  strive  to  present 
vividly  to  us  what  they  have  thus  represented  to  their  own  minds. 
Natural  endowments  being  equal,  those  writers  who  have  the 
greatest  number  of  residua  stored  up  in  consequence  of  much 
and  varied  experience,  are  best  qualified  to  call  up  vivid  images, 
and  best  qualified  to  call  up  such  as  are  truly  representative  of 
nature  ;  whilst  those  who  are  wanting  in  experience,  or  who  have 
not  sufficiently  cultivated  observation,  are  apt  to  become  vision- 
ary, vague,  and  unreal.  Even  in  matters  of  scientific  research, 
the  scientific  imagination  by  which  hypotheses  are  successively 
framed  until  a  fit  one  is  obtained,  its  verification  completed,  and 

*  "  Dr.  Ferriar  mentions  of  himself  that,  when  at  the  age  of  fourteen,  if  he 
had  been  viewing  any  interesting  object  in.  the  course  of  the  day,  as  a  romantic 
ruin,  a  fine  seat,  or  a  review  of  troops,  as  soon  as  evening  came  the  whole  scery 
was  brought  before  him  with  a  brilliancy  equal  to  what  it  possessed  in  daylight, 
and  remained  visible  for  some  minutes." — Abercrombie,  On  the  Intellectual 
Powers.  Sir  I.  Newton  could  recall  an  ocular  spectrum  of  the  sun  when  he 
went  into  the  dark  and  directed  his  mind  intensely,  "as  when  a  man  looks 
pftmestlv  to  see  a  thing  which  is  difficult  to  be  seen." 


v.]  IDEATION AL  CENTRES. 

a  discovery  thus  made,  is  based  upon  a  previous  careful  trainin» 
of  the  senses  in  scientific  observation,  and  works  by  means  of 
sensory  representations.  Natural  endowments  not  being  equal, 
however,  we  then  perceive  the  wide  difference  there  is  between 
one  who  has  an  adequate  idea  and  one  who  has  not.  The  latter, 
in  describing  scenery  or  events,  will  give  a  tedious  picture  cha- 
racterised by  minute  industry  and  overwrought  detail,  in  which 
there  is  no  due  subordination  of  parts,  no  organic  unity  of  idea — 
in  which  truly  soul  is  wanting — and  from  which,  therefore,  no 
one  can  carry  away  a  true  idea  of  the  whole  :  unpregnant  of  his 
subject,  he  has  been  going  about  to  give  a  photographic  copy  or  a 
minute  delineation  of  what  cannot  be  photographed.  The  former, 
on  the  other  hand,  produces,  through  the  plastic  power  of  idea, 
a  picture  in  which  the  unessential  is  suppressed,  the  essential 
thoroughly  grasped  and  moulded  into  an  organic  unity,  in  which 
due  subordination  and  co-ordination  of  parts  prevail,  and  from 
which,  therefore,  a  true  idea  of  the  whole  may  be  educed ;  truly 
comprehending  or  grasping  his  subject,  he  has  in  fact  idealized 
the  sensory  perceptions,  and  has  displayed  a  real  development  of 
nature.  This  sort  of  difference  between  men  is  not  less  evident 
in  scientific  working.  One  man  records  with  a  praiseworthy 
but  tedious  industry,  the  unconnected  impressions  made  upon  his 
senses,  and  never  gets  further  than  that :  fondly  thinking  that 
he  sees  with  his  eye,  and  not  through  it,  he  would,  were  he  set 
to  describe  the  sun  for  the  first  time,  describe  it  as  a  bright  disc 
about  the  size  of  a  big  cheese,  and  rest  content  for  the  future  with 
this  sensory  representation  of  it.  The  other  and  truer  man  of 
science  succeeds  in  combining,  by  means  of  the  organizing  power 
of  idea,  the  scattered  impressions  made  upon  the  senses,  is  able 
by  comparison  to  complement  or  correct  the  impression  made 
on  a  particular  sense,  and  to  form  to  himself  a  true  image  of  the 
sun,  not  as  a  mere  disc  of  fire,  but  as  an  immense  central  body 
moving  through  space,  with  its  attendant  planetary  system,  at 
the  rate  of  some  400,000  .miles  a  day.  Only  those  who  are  des- 
titute of  idea  would  dream  of  rejecting  entirely  the  aid  of'  idea 
in  scientific  inquiries. 

These  observations  will  not  be  a  useless  digression  if  they 
serve  to  teach  how  essential  to  the  completeness  of  conception 
is  the  functional  action  of  the  sensory  ganglia,  how  much  our 


116  HEMISPHERICAL  GANGLIA;  OR,  [CHAP. 

intellectual  development  depends,  not  only  upon  the  cultivation 
of  careful  habits  of  observation,  but  also  upon  the  co-operation 
of  the  sensory  centres  in  the  subsequent  intellectual  action.  The 
excitation  and  cultivation  of  the  seusorial  cells  are  necessary 
antecedents,  in  the  order  of  mental  development,  to  the  activity 
of  the  ideational  cell ;  and  the  ideational  cell  in  turn  effects  its 
complete  function  in  the  formation  of  a  distinct  conception  by 
reacting  downwards  upon  the  sensory  centres.  This  secondary 
intervention  of  the  sensory  ganglia  is  not  peculiar  to  man,  being, 
perhaps,  more  evidently  displayed  in  some  of  the  lower  animals. 
When  the  dog  scents  the  rabbit,  and  begins  to  scratch  furiously 
at  the  burrow,  it  is  plain  that  the  sense  of  smell  has  excited 
either  directly  the  visual  image  of  the  rabbit,  or  rather,  as  the 
dreaming  of  the  dog  would  seem  to  indicate,  the  idea  of  the 
rabbit,  which  idea  thereupon  excites  the  appropriate  image.  It 
is  worthy  of  remark,  how^  singularly  effective  in  man  the  sense 
of  smell  is  in  recalling  vividly  the  ideas  and  images  of  forgotten 
scenes  and  places.  This  reaction  of  ideas  upon  the  senses  is 
again  very  notable  in  dreams  ;  and  in  insanity,  when  the  rela- 
tions of  the  nervous  centres  are  disturbed,  actual  hallucinations 
of  a  sense,  such  as  cannot  be  corrected  by  the  evidence  of  unaf- 
fected senses,  or  by  reflection,  are  sometimes  due  to  the  influence 
of  ideas.  This  disordered  action  is,  after  all,  only  an  exagge- 
ration of  a  process  which  is  natural  in  our  mental  life.  The  idea 
cannot  receive  its  stimulus  directly  from  the  external  world,  nor 
can  it  react  directly  upon  the  external  world  ;  both  in  its  origin 
and  in  its  expression  are  the  senses  concerned. 

(c)  A  third  important,  though  little  recognised,  way  in  which 
idea  may  operate,  is  upon  the  functions  of  nutrition  and  secretion. 
"Whether  the  idea  acts,  as  is  probable,  directly  upon  the  organic 
elements  of  the  part  through  its  nerves,  or  whether  it  acts  indi- 
rectly by  an  effect  upon  the  vaso-motor  system,  it  is  certain  that 
the  influence  of  an  idea  may  increase  a  secretion  or  lessen  it, 
and  may  modify  nutrition.  The  idea  of  food  will  cause  a  flow 
of  saliva  ;  a  sympathetic  idea,  a  flow  of  tears  ;  the  idea  of  itching 
in  a  particular  spot  will  give  rise  to  an  itching  there  ;  and  the 
idea  that  a  structural  defect  will  certainly  be  removed  by  a  par- 
ticular act  does  sometimes  so  affect  the  organic  action  of  the 
part  as  to  produce  a  cure.  The  most  successful  physician  is  ever 


v.]  IDEATION AL  CENTRES.  1]J 

one  who  inspires  his  patient  with  the  greatest  confidence  in  the 
virtue  of  his  remedies.  Bacon  rightly,  therefore,  would  have  us 
inquire  into  the  Joest  means  to  "  fortify  and  exalt  the  imagina- 
tion." "And  here,"  he  says,  "comes  in  crookedly  and  danger- 
ously a  palliation  and  defence  of  a  great  part  of  ceremonial 
magic.  For  it  may  be  speciously  pretended  that  ceremonies, 
characters,  charms,  gesticulations,  amulets,  and  the  like,  do  not 
derive  their  power  from  any  tacit  or  sacramental  contract  with 
evil  spirits,  but  serve  only  to  strengthen  and  exalt  the  imagi- 
nation of  him  who  uses  them."  * 

(d]  There  is  yet  another  path  which  the  energy  of  an  idea  may 
take.  As,  in  reflex  action  of  the  spinal  cord,  the  residual  force 
which  was  over  and  above  what  passed  directly  outwards  in  the 
reaction  travelled  upwards  to  the  sensorium  commune  and 
excited  sensation ;  and  as  in  sensori-motor  action  the  residual 
force  which  was  over  and  above  what  passed  outwards  in  the 
reaction  travelled  up  to  the  cortical  cells,  and  gave  rise  to  idea ; 
so,  in  ideational  action,  the  force  which  does  not  pass,  or  the 
residual  force  which  may  be  over  and  above  what  does  pass, 
immediately  outwards  in  the  reaction,  abides  in  action  in  the 
cortical  centres,  and  passes  therein  from  cell  to  cell.  There  is 
no  superimposed  collection  of  cells  of  a  higher  kind  to  which 
it  might  now  ascend,  and  wherein  it  might  excite  a  higher  kind 
of  mental  activity  ;  there  is,  instead,  an  infinite  multitude  of 
nerve-cells  in  the  cortical  layers,  having  most  varied  and  nume- 
rous connexions,  whereby  activity  may  be  communicated  from 
one  to  another.  This  communication  is  what  does  take  place, 
probably,  when  one  idea  calls  up  another  by  some  association, 
itself  disappearing  in  the  act.  It  is  probable  that  one  idea  can 
only  call  another  into  activity  through  its  own  disappearance,  as 
one  wave  disappears  in  the  production  of  another  ;  this,  which  is 
Miiller's  simile,  expressing  the  condition  of  things  better  perhaps 
than  that  of  Hobbes,  who  looked  upon  one  idea  as  obscured  by 
the  more  active  one,  "  in  such  manner  as  the  light  of  the  sun 
obscureth  the  light  of  the  stars  ;  which  stars  do  no  less  exercise 
their  virtue,  by  which  they  are  visible,  in  the  day  than  in  the 
night."  f  (5)  There  is,  as  would  appear,  not  only  a  transference, 

*  De  Augmentis  Scientiarum,  B.  iv. 

t  Dr.  Brown  (Physiology  of  the  Mind,  p.  223)  held,  however,  that  the  slightest 


118  HEMISPHERICAL  GANGLIA;  OR,  [CHAP. 

but  a  transformation  of  force  from  cell  to  cell  within  the  hemi- 
spherical ganglia ;  and  the  tension  of  the  particular  cell,  or  the 
idea  for  the  moment  active,  is  attended  with  consciousness.  We 
are  now  come,  then,  to  another  sphere  of  mental  activity,  namely, 
activity  within  consciousness,  or  reflection. 

It  behoves  us  here  to  settle  clearly  in  our  minds  the  relation 
of  consciousness  to  ideational  activity,  or  at  any  rate  to  be  on 
our  guard  against  considering  consciousness  as  co-extensive  with 
such  activity.  When  the  whole  energy  of  an  idea  that  is  excited 
passes  immediately  outwards  in  ideomotor  action,  then  there  is 
scarce  any,  or  there  may  be  no,  consciousness  of  it ;  in  order  that 
there  may  be  consciousness  of  the  idea,  it  is  necessary  not  only 
that  its  excitation  reach  a  certain  intensity,  but  that  the  whole 
force  of  it  do  not  pass  immediately  outwards  in  the  reaction.  The 
persistence  for  a  time  of  a  certain  degree  of  intensity  of  energy  in 
the  ideational  cell  would  certainly  appear  to  be  the  condition-  of 
consciousness.  Accordingly  when  the  process  of  reflection  is  going 
on,  quietly  and  rapidly,  through  the  regular  association  of  ideas, 
there  is  no  consciousness  of  the  steps ;  in  the  train  of  thought  one 
idea  calls  another  into  activity  without  being  itself  attended  to,  so 
that  the  result  may  appear  as  if  sudden  and  accidental,  and  it 
may  be  very  difficult,  or  quite  impossible,  to  retrace  the  steps,  or 
take  up  the  successive  links,  by  which  it  was  evolved.  In  the 
course  of  a  day  how  many  thoughts  or  ideas  do  thus  suddenly 
start  into  consciousness,  or,  as  we  may  say,  suddenly  strike  us ! 
The  activity  of  one  ideational  cell  would  seem  to-  be  commu- 
nicated immediately  to  another,  and  the  energy  thus  to  run 


attention  to  the  successive  states  of  mind. would  show  "  that  a  conception,  after 
giving  rise  to  some  new  conception,  does  not  always  cease  to  be  itself  a  part  of  our 
continued  consciousness."  He  thought  that  it  often  remained  so  as  to  co-exist 
with  the  conception  which  itself  had  induced,  and  might  afterwards  suggest  other 
conceptions,  or  other  feelings,  with  which  it  might  then  co-exist  in  a  still  more 
complex  group.  "We  compare,  we  choose,  in  our  internal  plans,  because 
different  objects  are  together  present  to  our  conceptions."  Sir  "W.  Hamilton 
limited  to  six  the  number  of  objects  which  might  exist  in  consciousness  at  the 
same  time  ;  and  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill,  in  his  Examination  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  s 
Philosophy,  allows  a  "  great  multitude  of  stales,  more  or  less  conscious,  which 
often  co-exist  in  the  mind!"  On  this  question  Sir  H.  Holland  has  some  excellent 
remarks  in  his  "  Chapters  on  Mental  Physiology  ;"  and  for  a  fuller  nctice  cf  it 
than  would  be  proper  here,  I  may  refer  to  a  review  of  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill's  criticism  of 
Sir  "W.  Hamilton  in  the  Journal  of  Mental  Science  for  January  1866. 


v.]  1DEATIONAL  CENTRES.  119 

through  a  series  by  a  continuous  transformation,  with  no  residual 
persistence  at  any  of  the  intermediate  stages. 

A  conception  of  the  way  in  which  a  group  or  series  of  move- 
ments are  observably  associated,  and  the  faculty  of  them  is 
firmly  organized  in  the  nervous  centres,  so  that  they  are  hence- 
forth automatically  performed,  will  be  found  most  serviceable  in 
the  interpretation  of  the  phenomena  of  ideational  activity.  Like 
muscular  motions,  ideas  are  associated  in  groups  or  series ;  like 
them,  they  become  easier  with  repetition ;  like  them,  they  are 
excited  into  action  by  an  appropriate  stimulus ;  like  them,  when 
once  associated,  they  are  not  easily  separated ;  like  them,  they 
may  be  accomplished  without  consciousness  j  like  them,  they 
demand  an  appreciable  time  for  their  accomplishment ;  and*  like 
them,  they  are  fatigued  by  prolonged  exercise.  The  question  of  the 
time  necessary  for  the  performance,  so  to  speak,  of  an  idea  is  really 
a  most  important  one,  which  has  not  hitherto  received  sufficient 
attention.  It  is  sometimes  not  less  than  the  time  required  for  the 
performance  of  a  muscular  motion  ;  for,  as  Dr.  Darwin  observed, 
a  musician  can  press  the  keys  of  a  harpsichord  with  his  fingers 
in  the  order  of  a  tune  which  he  has  been  accustomed  to  play,  in 
as  little  a  time  as  he  can  run  over  those  notes  in  his  mind. 
Nay,  an  idea  may  even  require  more  time  than  a  movement : 
how  many  times  in  a  day  do  we  cover  our  eyes  with  our  eyelids 
without  ever  perceiving  that  we  are  in  the  dark  ?  In  this  case, 
as  Dr.  Darwin  has  also  observed,  the  muscular  motion  of  the 
eyelid  is  performed  quicker  than  the  idea  of  light  can  be  changed 
for  that  of  darkness :  the  twinkling  of  an  eye  being  quicker  than 
thought.C5)  The  interference  of  consciousness  is  often  an  actual 
impediment  in  the  association  of  ideas,  as  it  notably  is  to  the 
performance  of  movements  that  have  attained  the  complete  ease 
of  an  automatic  execution.  It  happens  that  we  try  hard  to 
remember  something,  and  are  unable  by  the  utmost  effort  of 
volition,  and  the  strongest  direction  of  consciousness,  to  do  so : 
we  thereupon  give  up  the  attempt,  and  direct  our  attention  to 
something  else ;  and,  after  a  while,  the  result  for  wjiich  we 
strove  in  vain,  flashes  into  consciousness :  the  automatic  action 
of  the  brain  has  worked  it  out.  That  is  exactly  what  we  might 
expect  to  happen  :  for  if  consciousness  implies  a  persistence  of 
the  tension  of  a  nerve-cell's  energy,  then  in  proportion  to  the 


120  HEMISPHERICAL  GANGLIA;  OR,  [CHAP. 

degree  of  persistent  tension  must  be  the  retardation  of,  or 
hindrance  to,  the  process  of  association  of  ideas,  which  is  effected 
by  a  transformation  of  energy  from  one  to  another  of  the 
catenated  cells.  An  active  consciousness  is  always  detrimental 
to  the  best  and  most  successful  thought :  the  thinker  who  is 
actively  attentive  to  the  succession  of  his  ideas  is  thinking  to 
little  purpose ;  what  the  genuine  thinker  observes  is  that  he  is 
conscious  of  the  words  which  he  is  uttering  or  writing,  while 
the  thought,  unconsciously  elaborated  by  the  organic  action  of 
the  brain,  flows  from  unpenetrated  depths  into  consciousness. 
Reflection  is  then,  in  reality,  the  reflex  action  of  the  cells  in 
their  relations  in  the  cerebral  ganglia :  it  is  the  reaction  of  one 
cell  to  a  stimulus  from  a  neighbouring  cell,  and  the  sequent 
transference  of  its  energy  to  another  cell — the  reflection  of  it. 
Attention  is  the  arrest  of  the  transformation  of  energy  for  a 
moment — the  maintenance  of  a  particular  tension.  Bear  in  mind 
what  was  said  of  the  varying  value  of  an  idea  and  of  the  manner 
of  its  gradual  organization  in  the  nervous  centres,  and  the  appli- 
cability of  the  term  deliberation  to  a  process  of  thought,  as  a 
weighing  or  balancing  of  one  reason  against  another,  will  be  evi- 
dent. Or  we  if  prefer  the  term  ratiocination,  we  may  say,  with 
Hobbes,  that  by  it  is  meant  computation.  "  Now  to  compute  is 
either  to  collect  the  sum  of  many  things  that  are  added  together, 
or  to  know  what  remains  when  one  thing  is  taken  from  another. 
Ratiocination,  therefore,  is  the  same  with  addition  and  subtrac- 
tion." Subtract  the  energy  of  an  opposing  idea  from  a  more 
powerful  one,  and  the  energy  left  represents  the  resultant  force 
of  impulse  after  deliberation ;  add  the  energy  of  a  like  idea  to 
another,  and  the  sum  represents  the  force  of  the  resolution. 
After  severe  reflection  or  deliberation  the  decision  or  resolution 
may  be  held  to  signify  that  we  have  resolved,  to  the  best  of  our 
ability,  the  complex  equation  set  us. 

Though  reflection  is  a  process  of  mental  activity  that  takes 
place  within  consciousness,  yet  consciousness  itself,  when  fairly 
examined,,  will  show  how  limited  is  the  power  of  the  mind  over 
the  train  of  its  ideas.  The  formation  of  an  idea  is  an  organic 
process  that  takes  place  by  imperceptible  degrees  beyond  the 
range  of  consciousness ;  the  idea,  when  formed,  exists  in  a  latent, 
quiescent  or  dormant  state :  and  it  may  even  be  made  active, 


v.l  IDEATION AL  CENTRES.  121 

and  its  energy  duly  expended,  without  consciousness.  In  like 
manner  the  catenation  of  a  group  or  series  of  ideas  is  an  organic 
process  of  which  consciousness  has  no  knowledge,  and  over 
which  volition  has  no  control;  once  firmly  linked  together  by 
this  organized  coherence,  the  excitation  of  one  idea  must  needs 
bring  on  the  excitation  of  the  others,  one  after  another  rising 
above' the  mental  horizon  into  consciousness  and  in  due  order 
again  sinking  below  it.  The  power  of  the  mind  over  the  succes- 
sion of  its  states  is  plainly  at  best  but  a  limited  faculty  ;  herein 
corresponding  with  that  limited  control  which  an  individual  has 
over  the  phenomena  of  his  bodily  life,  where  conscious  and 
unconscious,  voluntary  and  involuntary,  acts  are  so  intimately 
intermixed.  To  make  states  of  consciousness  synonymous  with 
states  of  mind,  as  some  have  heedlessly  done,  is  scarcely  less 
unwarrantable  than  it  would  be  to  assume  all  bodily  acts  to  be 
conscious  acts. 

There  yet  remains  something  more  to  be  said  concerning  the 
association  of  ideas.  The  anatomical  connexions  of  a  nerve-cell 
in  the  cerebral  ganglia  do,  of  a  necessity,  limit  the  direction  and 
extent  of  its  action  upon  other  cells  ;  for  it  may  be  deemed  tole- 
rably certain  that  as  the  conduction  in  nerve-fibres  demonstrably 
does  not  pass  from  one  to  another  except  by  continuity  of  tissue, 
so  the  activity  of  one  cell  cannot  be  communicated  to  another 
except  along  an  anastomosing  process.  Besides  this  necessary 
limitation  in  the  constitution  of  the  nervous  centres,  there  is  a 
further  determination  of  the  manner  of  association  by  the  indi- 
vidual life  experience.  "  Not  every  thought  to  every  thought 
succeeds  indifferently  ;"  but,,  as  all  ideas  have  been  acquired  by 
means  of  experience,  and  we  have  "  no  imagination  whereof  we 
have  not  formerly  had  sense  in  whole  or  in  parts,"  so  the  relations 
in  which  ideas  .exist  to  one  another  in  the  brain  must  answer  in 
some  manner  the  order  of  experience  ;  and  even  an  individual's 
habit  of  association  of  ideas  will  witness  to  the  influence  of  his 
particular  education  and  surroundings.  Social  life  would  simply 
be  rendered  impossible  if  we  could  not  depend  upon  the  unifor- 
mity of  the  laws  of  nature  in  man  as  well  as  out  of  him  ;  if  one 
idea  followed  another  casually,  it  would  be  all  one  as  if  one  event 
in  nature  occurred  without  connexion  with  another.  That  one 
idea  does  seemingly  follow  another  casually,  or  at  any  rate 


122  HEMISPHERICAL  GASGLIA;   OR,  [CHAP. 

without  recognisable  coherence,  justifies  us,  we  are  in  the  habit  of 
thinking,  in  shutting  a  man  up  in  a  lunatic  asylum ;  and  one  of 
the  first  signs  of  insanity  confessedly  is  an  unaccountable  change 
in,  or  disruption  of,  the  particular  uniformity  of  an  individual 
character.  The  foundation  of  our  laws,  and  the  maxims  of  life, 
entirely  rest  upon  the  constancy  of  laws  in  the  human  mind ;  "  a 
prisoner  who  has  neither  money  nor  interest,"  Hume  very  aptly 
says,  "  discovers  the  impossibility  of  his  escape  as  well  when  he 
considers  the  obstinacy  of  the  gaoler  as  the  walls  and  bars  with 
which  he  is  surrounded ;  and,  in  all  attempts  for  his  freedom, 
chooses  rather  to  work  upon  the  stone  and  iron  of  the  one,  than 
upon  the  inflexible  nature  of  the  other."  Although  ideas  are 
thus  as  much  associated  in  the  mind  by  physical  necessity  as 
are  cause  and  effect  in  external  nature ;  yet,  because  sometimes 
one  idea  has  succeeded  another  in  our  experience,  and  sometimes 
another,  it  is  not  certain  always  in  so  obscure  and  complex  a 
labyrinth  what  idea  shall  in  a  given  case  ensue ;  only  this  is 
certain,  that  it  shall  be  an  idea  that  has  been  associated  with  it 
at  one  time  or  another.  Necessity  is,  in  truth,  confessed  in  every 
deliberation  and  every  act  of  our  life. 

Because  each  one  has  a  certain  specific  nature  as  a  human 
being,  and  because  the  external  nature  in  relation  with  which 
each  one  exists  is  the  same,  therefore  are  inevitably  formed  cer- 
tain general  associations  which  cannot,  without  great  difficulty, 
or  anywise,  be  dissociated,  just  as  different  movements  are  so 
linked  together  in  all  men  that  they  cannot  be  dissociated. 
Such  are  what  have  been  described  as  the  general  laws  of  asso- 
ciation of  ideas — those  of  cause  and  effect,  of  contiguity  in  time 
and  space,  of  resemblance,  of  contrast ;  in  all  which  ways,  it  is 
true,  one  idea  may  follow  another,  though  also  in  many  other 
ways.  We  are  enabled,  however,  by  virtue  of  the  general  laws  of 
association  in  which  all  men  agree,  to  predict  the  general  course 
of  human  conduct,  and  to  establish  laws  for  the  regulation  of  the 
social  state.  Within  these  general  principles,  however,  there  are 
numerous  subordinate  differences ;  the  special  character  of  an 
individual's  association  of  ideas  being  determined  partly  by  his 
original  nature,  and  partly  by  his  special  life-experience. 

That  natural  differences  in  the  mental  susceptibilities  of  dif- 
persons  do  influence  the  character  of  their  association  of 


v.]  IDEATIONAL  CENTRES.  123 

ideas,  is  shown,  as  Dr.  Priestley  long  since  pointed  out,*  by  the 
greater  ease  with  which  some  men  associate  those  co-existences 
of  sensory  perceptions  which  combine  to  constitute  the  idea  of 
an  object,  while  others  associate  more  readily  those  successive 
sensory  impressions  which  go  to  form  the  idea  of  an  event. 
These  different  tendencies  and  dispositions  are  really  at  the 
foundation  of  two  different  types  of  mind.  In  the  former  case, 
there  is  a  mind  attentive  to  the  discrimination  of  impressions, 
skilful  in  discernment,  and  susceptible  to  the  pleasurable  and 
painful  properties  of  things — in  fact,  a  mind  good  at  description, 
and  fond  of  natural  history ;  in  the  latter  case,  there  is  a  mind 
observant  of  the  order  of  occurrence  of  phenomena,  prone  to  the 
investigation  of  the  genesis  of  things,  or  the  connexion  of  cause 
and  effect — in  fact,  a  philosophic  intellect,  affecting  science  and 
abstract  truth,  to  which  an  event  that  can  be  nowise  explained 
or  displayed  as  an  evolution  of  antecedent  causes,  is  a  painful 
tribulation.  Such  mind  is  at  the  opposite  end  of  the  scale  to 
that  of  the  "  poor  idiot  born,"  who,  by  reason  of  his  imperfect 
constitution,  has  but  few  ideas,  and  cannot  duly  associate  those 
few,  just  as  he  is  capable  of  but  few  imperfectly  associated  move- 
ments. Forget  not,  however,  that  between  the  idiot  at  the 
bottom  of  the  scale  of  human  life,  and  the  philosopher  at  its 
summit,  there  are  to  be  met  with  beings  representing  every  grade 
of  variation. 

Special  adaptations  to  particular  circumstances  of  life  also 
concur  to  lay  the  foundation  of  individual  habits  of  thought 
and  conduct  The  successful  tact  or  skill  of  one  man  in  circum- 
stances in  which  the  awkwardness  or  failure  of  another  is 
striking,  is  the  consequence  of  a  rapid  association  of  ideas 
which  has,  from  repeated  special  experience,  become  so  familiar, 
so  much  a  habit,  as  to  appear  like  an  intuition.  In  such  case 
the  group,  or'  series  of  ideas,  are  so  closely  united,  so  firmly 
organized,  as  to  behave  almost  as  one  idea ;  while  the  excitation, 
though  sufficient  for  the  desired  end,  does  not  take  place  to  such 
degree  as  to  produce  consciousness,  f  Even  the  instantaneous 

*  In  his  Introduction  to  Hartley. 

t  "Sot  only  do  simple  ideas,  by  strong  association,  ran  together,  and  form 
complex  ideas ;  bat  a  complex  idea,  when  the  simple  ideas  which  compose  it  have 
become  so  consolidated  that  it  always  appeals  as  one,  is  capable  of  entering  into 


]24  HEMISPHERICAL  GANGLIA;  OR,  [CHAP. 

correct  judgment  of  a  much  experienced  and  well-trained  mind, 
which  is  sometimes  so  rapid  as  to  look  like  an  instinct,  is 
founded  upon  a  previous  careful  training  in  observation  and 
reflection,  and  depends,  therefore,  in  reality  on  an  excellent 
association  of  ideas  that  has  been  organized  in  correspondence 
with,  or  adaptation  to,  the  series  of  co -existences  and  succes- 
sions in  external  nature ;  thus,  even  the  judgment  of  an  indi- 
vidual in  his  particular  life-relations  becomes  almost  automatic. 
When  it  is  said,  again,  that  a  man's  character  is  completely 
formed,  we  express  thereby  the  fact  that  he  has  acquired  certain 
definite  combinations  and  associations  of  ideas  which,  firmly 
organized,  henceforth  avail  him  in  the  different  relations  of  life. 
It  is  evident,  then,  th#t  if  we  had  a  complete  knowledge  of  the 
inner  nature  of  an  individual,  if  we  could  penetrate  that  most 
exquisitely  organized  fabric  of  thought  which  by  reason  of  his 
particular  life-experience  has  been  grafted  on  the  original  capa- 
bilities, it  would  be  possible  to  foretell  with  certainty  his  mode 
of  thought  and  conduct  under  any  given  circumstances — a  pre- 
diction which,  as  it  is,  those  who  know  a  man  best  often  fail  not 
to  make,  with  close  approximation  to  truth.  But  inasmuch  as 
no  two  minds  are  originally  exactly  alike,  and  as  no  two  persons 
have  precisely  similar  experiences,  the  speciality  of  human  con- 
ditions being  infinite  in  variety,  we  cannot  obtain  the  exact  and 
complete  elements  for  a  correct  and  definite  judgment  of  the 
operation  of  a  given  cause  upon  any  individual.  None  the  less 
true  is  it  that  every  cause  does  operate  definitely  by  as  stern 
a  necessity  as  any  which  exists  in  physical  nature. 

Once  more,  then,  is  it  rendered  evident  how  necessary  to 
a  complete  psychology  of  the  individual  is  the  consideration 
of  the  circumstances  in  which  he  has  lived,  and  in  relation  to 
which  he  has  developed,  as  well  as  the  observation  of  his  habits 

combinations  with,  other  ideas,  both  simple  and  complex.  Thus  two  complex 
ideas  may  be  united  together  by  a  strong  association,  and  coalesce  into  one,  in 
the  same  manner  as  two  or  more  simple  ideas  coalesce  into  one.  This  union  of 
two  complex  ideas  into  one,  Dr.  Hartley  has  called  a  duplex  idea.  Two  also  of 
these  duplex  ideas,  or  doubly  compounded  ideas,  may  unite  into  one  ;  and  these, 
again,  into  other  compounds  without  end."  ....  "  How  many  complex  or 
'duplex  ideas  are  all  united  in  the  idea  of  furniture  ?  How  many  more  in  the  idea 
of  merchandise  ?  How  many  more  in  the  idea  called  Every  Thing  ?  "— J.  Mill, 
op.  tit.  p.  82. 


v.J  IDEATIONAL  CENTRES.  125 

of  thought,  feeling,  and  action.  From  what  has  been  said  of 
ideas  and  their  associations,  it  is  obvious  that  in  the  same 
language,  when  used  by  different  people,  there  must  often  be 
considerable  difference  in  regard  to  the  fulness  and  exactness 
of  the  ideas  conveyed  by  it.  (T)  In  translation  from  one  language 
to  another  it  plainly  appears  that  ideas,  which-  have  a  general 
resemblance,  nave  yet  certain  special  differences  according  to 
the  depth  of  thought,  the  religion,  the  manners  and  ctistoms 
of  the  different  nations ;  it  is  as  hard  a  matter  to  convey 
adequately  in  the  French  language  the  meaning  of  German 
philosophy  as  it  is  to  express  adequately,  by  the  corresponding 
German  words,  the  exact  meaning  of  the  French  names  for 
different  shades  of  elegant  vice  or  elegant  cookery.  And  who- 
soever enters  upon  the  study  of  psychology  with  the  assumption 
that  an  idea  deemed  or  called  the  same  has  always  the  same 
constant  value  in  different  people  of  the  same  nation,  will  be  led 
into  the  vainest  errors  by  so  false  a  metaphysical  conception. 
Do  not  men  owe  most  of  their  errors  and  disputes  to  the  fact 
that  they  cannot  come  to  a  right  understanding  of  words  ? 
How  should  they,  indeed,  when  by  the  same  word  is  frequently 
signified  an  idea  at  very  different  stages  of  its  evolution  ? 

It  remains  only  to  add  here,  that  the  successive  formation  of 
ideas  in  mental  development  and  the  progressive  complexity  of 
their  association  and  of  their  interaction  in  the  supreme  centres 
of  the  brain,  do  illustrate,  as  the  development  of  the  spinal 
centres  and  the  development  of  the  sensory  centres  did  also, 
an  increasing  organic  specialization  in  the  relations  of  man  to 
external  nature;  that  Von  Baer's  law  of  progress  from  the 
general  and  simple  to  the  special  and  complex  here,  as  else- 
where in  organic  development,  has  sway. 

Thus  far,  then,  we  have  exhibited  the  path  of  distribution  for 
the  energy  of  an  idea  when  it  does  not  pass  outwards  in  a  direct 
reaction  to  the  stimulus  from  without :  it  travels  from  cell  to 
cell  within  the  cortical  layers  of  the  hemispheres,  and  thus  gives 
rise  to  reflection.  But  at  the  end  of  all  this  wandering  or  of  the 
various  transformations,  as  the  final  result  of  reflection,  there 
may  still  be  a  reaction  downwards,  and  consequent  outward 
activity.  When  that  takes  place,  it  is  volitional  action:  the 
will  is  the  resultant  of  the  complex  interaction  of  the  supreme 


126  HEMISPHERICAL  GANGLIA;  OR,  [CHAP. 

ganglionic  cerebral  cells.  We  rise  gradually  up  to  this  highest 
manifestation  of  force  by  following  the  fundamental  reaction  of 
nerve-cell  through  reflex  action,  sensoii-motor  action,  and  ideo- 
motor  action.  As,  however,  there  is  usually  present  in  the 
action  of  will  some  desire  of  a  good  to  be  obtained,  or  of  an 
evil  to  be-  shunned,  it  will  be  proper,  before  considering  the 
nature  of  volition,  to  deal  with  the  emotions.  To  them,  there- 
fore, shall  the  next  chapter  be  devoted. 


NOTES. 

1  (p.  109). — "  For  what  is  meant  by  innate  ?    If  innate  be  equivalent 
to  natural,  then  all  the  perceptions  and  ideas  of  the  mind  must  be 
allowed  to  be  innate  or  natural,  in  whatever  sense  we  take  the  latter 
words,  whether  in  opposition  to  what  is  uncommon,  artificial,  or  mira- 
culous.    If  by  innate  be  meant  contemporary  to  our  birth,  the  dispute 
seems  to  be  frivolous  ;  nor  is  it  worth  while  to  inquire  at  what  time 
thinking  begins,  whether  before,  at,  or  after  our  birth.     Again,  the 
word  idea  seems  to  be  commonly  taken  in  a  very  loose  sense  by  Locke 
and  others  as  standing  for  any  of  our  perceptions,  our  sensations  and 
passions,  as  well  as  our  thoughts.     Now,  in  this  sense,  I  should  desire 
to  know  what  can  be  meant  by  asserting  that  self-love,  or  resentment 
of  injuries,  or  the  passion  between  the  sexes,  is  not  innate  ?  " — Hume, 
Essay  concerning  the  Human  Understanding. 

2  (p.  110). — "  I  cannot  but  think  that  the  two  main  articles  of 
belief  which  have  been  set  down  to  the  credit  of  the  Indian — namely, 
the  Great  Spirit  or  Creator,  and  the  Happy  Hunting-grounds  in  a  future 
world, — are  the  results  of  missionary  teaching,  the  work  of  the  Fathers 
Hennepin,    Marguette,  and  their  noble  army  of  martyred  Jesuit  fol- 
lowers."   The   Manitou,  which   we  are   obliged  to   translate 

"  Spirit,"  exists  everywhere ;  they  believe  there  is  a  manitou  in  water, 
fire,  in  stars,  in  grass,  &c. ;  it  is  the  essence  of  Fetishism.     "  It  is 
doubtful  whether  these  savages  ever  grasped  the  idea  of  a  human  soul." 
.  ..."  I  do  not  believe  that  an  Indian  of  the  plains  ever  became  a 
Christian.      He  must  first  be  humanized,  then  civilized,  and,  lastly, 
Christianized ;  and,  as  has  been  said  before,  I  doubt  his  surviving  the 
operation."— The. City  of  the  Saints,  by  E.  F.  Burton,  p.  133. 

8  (p.  110).— "  There  is  no  other  act  of  man's  mind  that  I  can 
remember,  naturally  planted  in  him,  so  as  to  need  no  other  thing  in 
the  exercise  of  it,  but  to  be  born  a  man  and  live  with  the  use  of 


v.]  IDEATIONAL  CENTRES.  127 

his  five  senses.  Those  other  faculties  of  which  I  shall  speak  by  and 
by,  and  which  seem  proper  to  man  only,  are  acquired  and  increased 
by  study  and  industry,  and  of  most  men  learned  by  instruction  and 
discipline ;  and  proceed  ail  from  the  invention  of  word  and  speech." — 
Hobbes,  Leviathan,  ch.  iii. 

4  (p.  111). — "  The  first  consideration  I  have  upon  the  subject  of 
the  senses  is  that  I  make  a  doubt  whether  or  no  man  be  furnished 
with  all  natural  senses.     I  see  several  animals  who  live  an  entire  and 
perfect  life,  some  without  sight,  others  without  hearing ;  who  knows 
whether  to  us  also,  one,  two,  three,  or  many  other  senses  may  not  be 
wanting?     For  if  any  one  be  wanting,  our  examination  cannot  dis- 
cover the  defect."     "  'Tis  the  privilege  of  the  senses  to  be  the  utmost 
limit  of  our  discovery ;  there  is  nothing  beyond  them  that  can  assist  us 
in  exploration,  not  so  much  as  one  sense  in  the  discovery  of  another." . . . 

"  There  is  no  sense  that  has  not  a  mighty  dominion,  and  that  does 
not  by  its  power  introduce  an  infinite  number  of  knowledges.  If  we 
were  defective  in  the  intelligence  of  sounds,  of  harmony  and  of  the 
voice,  it  would  cause  an  unimaginable  confusion  in  all  the  rest  of  our 
science ;  for,  besides  what  belongs  to  the  proper  effect  of  every  sense, 
how  many  arguments,  consequences,  and  conclusions,  do  we  draw  to 
other  things,  by  comparing  one  sense  with  another  ?  Let  an  under- 
standing man  imagine  human  nature  originally  produced  without  the 
sense  of  seeing,  and  consider  what  ignorance  and  trouble  such  a  defect 
would  bring  upon  him,  what  a  darkness  and  blindness  in  the  soul ;  he 
will  then  see  by  that  of  how  great  importance  to  the  knowledge  of 
truth,  the  privation  of  such  another  sense,  or  of  two  or  three,  should 
we  be  so  deprived,  would  be.  We  have  formed  a  truth  by  the  con- 
currence of  our  five  senses  ;  but,  perhaps,  we  should  have  the  co'nsent 
and  contribution  of  eight  or  ten  to  make  a  certain  discovery  of  it  in  its 
essence." — Montaigne's  Essays. 

5  (p.  117). — "  The  decay  of  sense  in  men  waking  is  not  the  decay 
of  the  motion  made  in  sense,  but  an  obscuring  of  it,  in  such  manner  as 
the  light  of  the  sun  obscureth  the  light  of  the  stars  ;  which  stars  do  no 
less  exercise  their  virtues,  by  which  they  are  visible,  in  the  day  than  in 
the  night.     But  because  among  many  strokes  which  our  eyes,  ears, 
and  other  organs  receive  from  external  bodies,  the  predominant  only  is 
sensible;  therefore,  the  light  of  the  sun  being  predominant,  we  are 
not  affected  with  the  action  of  the  stars." — Leviathan,  ch.  vi. 

6  (p.  119). — "  The  time  taken  up  in  performing  an  idea  is  likewise 
much  the  same  as  that  taken  up  in  performing  a  muscular  motion.     A 
musician  can  press  the  keys  of  an  harpsichord  with  his  fingers  in  the 


128  HEMISPHERICAL  GANGLIA,  ETC.  [CHAP.  v. 

order  of  a  tune  he  has  "been  accustomed  to  play  in  as  little  time  as  he 
can  run  over  these  notes  in  his  mind.  So  we  many  times  in  an  hour 
cover  our  eyeballs,  without  perceiving  that  we  are  in  the  dark ;  hence 
the  perception  or  idea  of  light  is  not  changed  for  that  of  darkness  in 
so  small  a  time  as  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  so  that,  in  this  case,  the 
muscular  motion  of  the  eyelid  is  performed  quicker  than  the  perception 
of  light  can  be  changed  for  that  of  darkness." — Zoonomia,  vol.  i.  p.  24. 

7  (p.  125). — "It  will  easily  appear  from  the  observations  here  made 
upon  words,  and  the  associations  which  adhere  to  them,  that  the  lan- 
guages of  different  ages  and  nations  must  bear  a  general  resemblance  to 
each  other,  and  yet  have  considerable  particular  differences  ;  whence  any 
one  may  be  translated  into  any  other,  so  as  to  convey  the  same  ideas 
in  general,  and  yet  not  with  perfect  precision  and  exactness.  They 
must  resemble  one  another  because  the  phenomena  of  nature,  which 
they  are  all  intended  to  express,  and  the  uses  and  exigencies  of  human 
life,  to  which  they  minister,  have  a  general  resemblance.  But  then, 
as  the  bodily  make  and  genius  of  each  people,  the  air,  soil,  and 
climate,  commerce,  arts,  science,  religion,  &c.,  make  considerable 
differences  in  different  ages  and  nations,  it  is  natural  to  expect  that  the 
languages  should  have  proportionable  differences  in  respect  of  each 
other." — Hartley's  Theory  of  the  Human  Mind,  by  Dr.  Priestley. 

"Wherefore,  as  men  owe  all  their  true  ratiocination  to  the  right 
understanding  of  speech,  so  also  they  owe  their  errors  to  the  misunder- 
standing of  the  same  ;  and  as  all  the  ornaments  of  philosophy  proceed 
only  from  man,  so  from  man  also  is  derived  the  ugly  absurdity  of  false 
opinions.  For  speech  has  something  in  it  like  to  a  spider's  web  (as  it 
wae  said  of  old  of  Solon's  laws),  for  by  contexture  of  words  tender 
and  delicate  wit  are  ensnared  and  stopped;  but  strong  wits  break 
easily  through  them." — Hobbes,  voL  i.  p.  36. 


CHAPTEE  VI. 

TEE    EMOTIONS. 

II  TAN  is  patient  and  agent ;  he  suffers  certain  passions,  and 
-L*-L  does  certain  actions  :  a  calm  deliberation  involves  an  equi- 
librium between  suffering  and  doing  ;  but  in  so  far  as  an  idea  is 
attended  with  some  feeling,  whether  of  pleasure  or  of  pain,  or 
of  a  more  special  character,  it  is  to  that  extent  emotional ;  and 
if  the  feeling  preponderate,  the  idea  is  obscured,  and  the  state  of 
mind  is  then  called  an  emotion  or  a  passion.  Strictly  speaking,  all 
conscious  psychical  states  are,  at  first,  feelings ;  but,  after  having 
been  experienced  several  times,  they  are  adequately  and  defi- 
nitely organized,  and  become  almost  automatic  or  indifferent 
under  ordinary  circumstances.  As  long  as  the  ideas  or  mental 
states  are  not  adequately  organized  in  correspondence  with  the 
individual's  external  relations,  more  or  less  feeling  will  attend 
their  excitation ;  they  will,  in  fact,  be  more  or  less  emotional. 
When  the  equilibrium  between  the  subjective  and  objective  is 
duly  established,  there  is  no  passion,  and  there  is  but  little 
emotion.  (l) 

It  has  been  sufficiently  evident,  up  to  the  present  point,  that 
the  condition  of  the  nervous  centres  is  of  the  greatest  conse- 
quence in  respect  of  the  formation  of  the  so-called  mental 
faculties,  and  the  manifestation  of  their  functions ;  it  will  now 
be  seen  that  this  condition  is  of  still  more  manifest  consequence 
in  regard  to  the  phenomena  of  the  emotions.  Every  one's 
experience  teaches  him  that  an  idea  which  is  at  one  time  in- 
different, being  accompanied  by  no  feeling  of  pleasure  or  dis- 
comfort, may,  at  another  time,  be  attended  by  some  feeling  of 
discomfort,  or  become  positively  painful.  And  it  requires  no- 
10 


130  THE  EMOTIONS.  [CHAP. 

very  careful  observation  of  men  to  discover  that  different  persons 
are  very  differently  affected  by  one  and  the  same  object,  and 
often  pass  very  different  judgments  upon  it  in  consequence.  So 
much  is  this  the  case  that  we  are  in  the  constant  habit  of  dis- 
tinguishing men  by  the  difference  of  their  emotional  disposition, 
or  of  the  temper  of  their  minds,  and  of  speaking  accordingly  of 
one  man  as  timid  ;  of  another  as  courageous ;  of  one  as  irritable, 
quick-tempered ;  of  another  as  even-tempered,  placid.  One  of 
the  earliest  symptoms  of  an  oncoming  insanity,  and  one  that  is 
almost  universally  present  as  the  expression  of  a  commencing 
deterioration,  howsoever  caused,  of  the  nervous  centres,  is  an 
emotional  disturbance,  upon  which  follows  more  or  less  per- 
version of  judgment.  It  is  feeling,  or  the  affective  life,  that 
reveals  the  deep  essential  nature  of  the  man. 

The  first  occurring  observation  is,  that  an  idea  which  is  favour- 
able to  the  impulses  or  strivings  of  the  individual,  to  self- 
expansion,  is  accompanied  by  a  feeling  of  more  or  less  pleasure  ; 
and  that  an  idea  which  betokens  individual  restriction,  which  is 
opposed  to  the  expansion  of  self,  is  attended  with  a  feeling  of 
more  or  less  discomfort  or  pain.  As  the  organic  germ  does, 
under  circumstances  favourable  to  its  inherent  developmental 
impulse,  incorporate  matter  from  without,  exhibiting  its  gratifi- 
cation, so  to  speak,  by  its  growth,  and,  under  unfavourable 
conditions,  does  not  assimilate,  but  manifests  its  suffering  or 
passion  by  its  decay  ;  so  likewise  does  the  ganglionic  nerve-cell 
of  the  hemispheres  testify  by  a  pleasant  emotion  to  the  further- 
ance of  its  development,  and  declares  in  a  painful  feeling  of 
discomfort  the  restriction  or  injury  which  it  suffers  from  an 
unfavourable  stimulus.  Even  in  the  earliest  sensation,  therefore, 
the  existence  of  pain  or  pleasure  is  a  sort  of  obscure  judgment 
on  its  advantage  or  disadvantage  to  the  personality  or  self — a 
judgment  in  which,  as  Herbart  has  observed,  the  subject  cannot 
yet  be  separated  from  the  predicate  that  expresses  praise  or 
blame.*  Among  so  many  dangers,  then,  "  to  have  a  care  of  one's 
self  is,"  in  the  words  of  Hobbes,  "  so  far  from  being  a  matter 
scornfully  to  be  looked  at,  that  one  has  neither  the  power  nor 
wish  to  have  done  otherwise.  For  every  man  is  desirous  of 

*  "  Em  Urtlieil,  in  dem  nur  das  Yorgest elite  sich.  nocli  nicht  von  dem 
Predicate,  das  Beifall  oder  Tadel  ausdriictt,  sondern  lasst." — Herbart. 


VL]  THE  EMOTIONS.  131 

what  is  good  for  him,  and  shuns  what  is  evil,  but  chiefly  the 
chiefest  of  natural  evils,  which  is  death ;  and  this  he  doth  by  a 
certain  impulsion  of  nature,  no  less  than  that  whereby  a  stone 
moves  downwards."  (2)  Children  and  savages  best  exhibit  in  a 
naked  simplicity  the  •  different  passions  that  result  from  the 
affection  of  self  by  what,  when  painful,  is  deemed  an  ill ;  when 
pleasurable,  a  good. 

It  is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  that  a  stimulus,  which  in 
moderation  gives  rise  to  a  pleasant  idea  or  rather  emotion,  will, 
when  too  prolonged  or  too  powerful,  produce  discomfort  or  pain, 
and  consequent  efforts  to  escape  from  it.  There  is  then  a  desire 
to  shun  the  stimulus,  like  as  one  altogether  noxious  is  shunned  ; 
the  desire  becoming  the  motive  or  spring  of  action.  The  impulse 
in  such  case  is  described  as  desire,  because  there  is  consciousness 
of  it ;  but  it  is  without  doubt  the  equivalent  in  a  higher  organic 
element  of  that  effort  which  the  lowest  animal  organism  exhibits, 
without  consciousness,  in  getting  away  from  an  injurious  sti- 
mulus. In  both  instances  there  is,  in  truth,  the  manifestation 
of  the  so-called  self-conservative  impulse  which  is  immanent 
in  all  living  organic  elements — an  impulse  or  instinct,  which, 
whatever  deeper  facts  of  intimate  composition  it  connotes,  is 
the  essential  condition  of  its  existence  as  organic  element. 
Such  reaction  of  organic  element  is  as  natural  and  necessary  as 
the  reaction  of  any  chemical  compound,  because  as  much  the 
consequence  of  the  properties  of  matter  thus  organically 
combined.  "When  the  stimulus  to  a  hemispherical  nerve- 
cell  is  not  in  sufficient  force  to  satisfy  the  demands  of 
the  latter, — when,  in  fact,  it  is  inadequate, — then  there  is 
the  manifestation  of  its  affinity  or  attraction  by  the  nervous 
centre,  an  outward  impulse,  appetency,  or  striving,  which, 
again,  as  it  occurs  in  consciousness,  is  revealed  to  us  as 
desire,  craving,  or  appetite.  There  is  no  difference,  indeed,  as 
Spinoza  observes,  between  appetite  and  desire,  except  in  so  far 
as  the  latter  implies  consciousness ;  desire  is  self-conscions 
appetite.  (3)  Because  we  have  an  appetite  or  desire  for  some- 
thing, therefore  we  judge  it  to  be  good:  it  certainly  is  not 
because  a  thing  is  judged  to  be  good  that  we  have  an  appetite 
or  desire  for  it.  Here,  again,  there  is  an  exact  correspondence 
with  that  attraction,  impulse,  or  striving  of  organic  element 


132  THE  EMOTIONS.  [CHAP. 

towards  a  favourable  stimulus  manifested  throughout  nature,  and 
the  necessary  correlate  of  which  is  a  repulsion  of  what  is  un- 
favourable. Because  the  affinity  is  exhibited  in  vital  structure, 
we  are  prone,  when  observing  it,  to  transfer  our  own  states  of 
consciousness  to  the  organic  element,  and,  therefore,  to  represent 
it  on  all  occasions  as  striving,  by  means  of  a  self-conservative 
impulse  or  instinct,  for  the  stimulus  favourable  to  its  growth. 
But  the  attraction  is  no  less  a  physical  necessity  than  the 
attraction  of  an  acid  for  an  alkali,  of  the  needle  to  the  pole,  or 
of  positive  for  negative  electricity;  if  there  was  no  stimulus, 
there  would  be  no  reaction  on  the  part  of  the  organic  element ; 
if  the  stimulus  was  in  injurious  excess,  or  otherwise  unfavour- 
able, there  must  be  distiirbance  of  the  statical  equilibrium,  and 
a  reaction  of  repulsion  ;  and  when  the  stimulus  is  favourable 
but  deficient,  the  reaction  is  manifest  in  the  display  of  an 
attraction  or  affinity  for  an  additional  amount,  like  as  a  non- 
neutralized  acid  will  take  up  more  alkali,  or  as  unsatisfied 
appetite  craves  for  more  nutriment.  Now,  it  is  most  important 
that  we  do  not  allow  the  presence  of  consciousness  to  mislead 
us  as  to  what  is  the  fundamental  condition  ef  things  in  the 
ganglionic  cells  of  the  brain.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  healthy 
organic  element  manifests  its  fundamental  properties,  pursuing 
the  good,  eschewing  the  ill ;  and  consciousness  is  something 
superadded,  but  which  nowise  abolishes  them.  The  striving 
after  a  pleasing  impression,  or  the  effort  to  avoid  a  painful  one, 
is  at  bottom  a  physical  consequence  of  the  nature  of  the  gan- 
glionic cell  in  its  relation  to  a  certain  stimulus  ;  and  the  reaction 
or  desire  becomes  the  motive  of  a  general  action  on  the  part  of 
the  individual  for  the  purpose  of  satisfying  a  want,  or  of 
shunning  an  ill.  The  care  of  himself  no  man  in  good  health 
has  the  power  of  neglecting. 

It  is  obvious  then,  not  only  how  desires  become  the  motives 
of  action,  but  how  they  are  gradually  evolved  into  their  complete 
form  out  of  the  unconscious  organic  appetites.  In  the  desire  of 
the  adult  there  is  necessarily  some  sort  of  conception  of  what  is 
desired,  though  it  is  at  times  a  not  very  definite  one ;  but  in 
the  child,  as  in  the  idiot,  we  frequently  witness  a  vague  restless- 
ness evincing  an  undefined  want  of,  or  desire  for,  something  of 
which  itself  is  unconscious,  but  which,  when  obtained,  presently 


vi.]  THE  EMOTIONS.  133 

produces  quiet  and  satisfaction  :  the  organic  life  speaks  out  with 
an  as  yet  inarticulate  utterance.  Most  striking  is  that  example 
of  the  evolution  of  organic  life  into  consciousness  which  is 
observed  at  the  time  of  puberty,  when  new  organs  come  into 
action ;  when  vague  afod  ill-understood  desires  give  rise  to 
obscure  impulses  that  have  no  defined  aim,  and  produce  a  rest- 
lessness which,  when  misapplied,  is  often  mischievous  :  the 
amorous  appetite  thus  first  declares  its  existence.  But  to  prove 
how  little  it  is  indebted  to  the  consciousness  which  is  a  natural 
subsequent  development,  it  is  only  necessary  to  reflect  that  even 
in  man  the  desire  attains  to  a  knowledge  of  its  aim,  and  to  a 
sort  of  satisfaction,  in  dreams  before  it  does  so  in  real  life.  This 
simple  reflection  might  of  itself  suffice  to  teach  psychologists 
how  far  more  fundamental  than  any  conscious  mental  state  is 
the  unconscious  mental  or  cerebral  life.  Given  an  ill-constituted 
or  imperfectly  developed  brain  at  the  time  when  the  sexual 
appetite  makes  its  appearance,  and  what  is  the  result  ?  None 
other  than  that  which  happens  with  the  lower  animal,  where 
love  is  naked  lust,  and  the  sight  of  the  female  excites  a  desire 
that  immediately  issues  in  uncontrollable  efforts  for  its  gratifi- 
cation. Given,  on  the  other  hand,  a  well  constituted  and  natu- 
rally developed  brain,  the  sexual  desire  undergoes  a  complex 
development  in  consciousness;  from  its  basis  are  evolved  all 
those  delicate,  exalted,  and  beautiful  feelings  of  love  that  consti- 
tute the  store  of  the  poet,  and  play  so  great  a  part  in  human 
happiness  and  in  human  sorrow.  What,  however,  is  true  of 
these  particular  desires  is  true  of  all  our  desires :  it  may  be 
fitly  said,  with  Bacon,  "  that  the  mind  in  its  own  nature  would 
be  temperate  and  staid,  if  the  affections,  as  winds,  did  not  put  it 
in  tumult  and  perturbation ; "  or,  with  Novalis,  that  "  life  is  a 
feverish  activity  excited  by  passion." 

"When  the  force  of  a  stimulus  is  exactly  adapted  to  the  neces- 
sities of  the  organic  element,  then  are  the  circumstances  most 

O  ' 

favourable  to  the  development  of  the  latter  ;  and  a  steady  growth 
of  it  fails  not  to  testify  to  the  complete  harmony  of  the  relations. 
Or,  adopting  the  language  proper  in  such  case  to  the  highest  rela- 
tions of  man,  there  is  an  equilibrium  between  the  subjective  and 
the  objective,  and  no  passion :  there  is  neither  a  painful  feeling 
with  consequent  desire  to  avoid  a  suffering,  nor  is  there  a  feeling 


134  THE  EMOTIONS.  [CHAP. 

of  insufficient  satisfaction  with  consequent  desire  to  increase  or 
continue  an  enjoyment ;  but  a  steady  assimilation,  promoting  the 
evolution  of  idea,  goes  favourably  on  :  intellectual  development 
is  then  most  favoured.  As  there  is  no  outward  striving  or 
craving  in  such  case,  the  energy  of  the  reaction  to  the  stimulus 
is  expended  in  the  growth  of  the  idea  and  in  the  reaction  of  it 
upon  other  ideas,— in  other  words,  in  intellectual  development. 
Conception  and  desire  do,  therefore,  stand  in  a  sort  of  opposition 
to  one  another,  although  in  every  mental  act  they  co-exist  in 
greater  or  less  relative  degree ;  in  every  conception  there  is,  or 
has  once  been,  as  previously  said,  some  feeling  ;  and  again,  in 
every  distinct  desire  there  is  a  conception  of  something  desired. 
But  the  opposition  between  them  is  in  reality  a  matter  of  the 
degree  of  formation  of  the  idea  or  conception;  for,  whatever 
its  nature,  there  is  always  more  or  less  feeling  with  it  when 
first  experienced,  which,  however,  disappears  in  proportion  as 
it  becomes  definitely  organized :  and  even  though  some  little 
feeling  or  desire  remains  connected  with  the  idea,  it  may  often 
remain  in  consciousness,  or  only  modify  reflection,  not  being  of 
sufficient  degree  to  pass  into  outward  reaction.  May  we  not 
then  justly  affirm,  as  we  clearly  perceive,  that  the  intellectual 
life  does  not  supply  the  motive,  or  impulse,  to  action  ;  that  the 
understanding,  or  reason,  is  not  commonly  the  cause  of  our  out- 
ward actions,  but  that  the  desires  are  ?  Men  of  great  reasoning 
powers  are  notoriously  not  unfrequently  incapacitated  thereby 
from  energetic  action  ;  they  balance  reasons  so  nicely  that  no  one 
of  them  outweighs  another,  and  they- can  come  to  no  decision: 
with  them,  as  with  Hamlet,  meditation  paralyses  action.  In  fact, 
the  power  of  the  understanding  is  inhibitoiy,  and  is  exhibited 
rather  in  the  hindrance  of  passion-prompted  action,  and  in  the 
guidance  of  our  impulses,  than  in  the  instigation  of  conduct ;  its 
office  being  in  the  individual  as  in  the  race,  according  to  Comte, 
not  to  impart  the  habitual  impulsion,  but  deliberative.  (4) 

As  there  are  two  elements  which  go  to  the  production  of  an 
emotion — namely,  the  organic  element  and  the  external  stimulus 
— it  is  plain  that  the  character  of  the  emotional  result  will  not 
be  determined  only  by  the  nature  of  the  stimulus,  but  will 
depend  greatly  also  upon  the  condition  of  the  organic  element. 
The  equilibrium  between  the  individual  and  his  surroundings 


vi.]  THE  EMOTIONS.  135 

may,  in  fact,  be  disturbed  by  a  subjective  modification,  or  an 
internal  commotion,  as  well  as  by  an  unwonted  impression  from 
without.  When  some  bodily  derangement  has  affected  the  con- 
dition of  the  cells  of  the  cerebral  ganglia,  either  directly  or  by 
a  reflex  or  sympathetic  action,  then  an  idea  arising  is  accom- 
panied with  certain  emotional  qualities,  though  it  is  an  idea 
which,  in  health,  is  commonly  indifferent ;  just  as  when  a 
morbid  state  of  an  organ  of  sense,  or  of  its  sensory  ganglion, 
renders  painful  an  impression  which  in  health  would  be  indif- 
ferent or  even  agreeable.  The  drunken  man,  at  a  certain  stage 
of  his  degradation,  gets  absurdly  emotional ;  every  one's  expe- 
rience teaches  how  much  his  tone  of  mind  varies  according  to 
his  bodily  states ;  and  the  general  paralytic,  whose  supreme 
nervous  centres  are  visibly  degenerate,  is  characterised  by  great 
emotional  excitability,  as  well  as  by  intellectual  feebleness. 
The  general  feeling  of  well-being  which  results  from  a  healthy 
condition  of  all  the  organs  of  the  body,  which  is  indeed 
the  expression  of  a  favourably  proceeding  organic  life,  is  known 
as  the  ccencestlusis,  and  is  sometimes  described  as  an  emotion : 
but  it  is  not  truly  an  emotion ;  it  is  the  body's  sensation  or 
feeling  of  its  well-being,  and  marks  a  condition  of  things, 
therefore,  in  which  activity  of  any  kind  will  be  pleasurable — 
in  which  an  idea  that  arises  will  be  pleasantly  emotional, 
not  otherwise  than  as  bodily  movement  then  is  pleasurable. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  general  feeling  of  discomfort  which 
follows  upon  a  visceral  disturbance  or  any  other  cause,  is  a  con- 
dition in  which  activity  of  any  kind  will  be  rather  painful  than 
otherwise ;  there  is  a  restricted  or  hindered  personality,  and  an 
idea  arising  is  apt  to  be  gloomily  emotional.  It  plainly  amounts 
to  the  same  thing,  whether  an  excessive  stimulus  acts  upon  the 
nervous  element  when  in  a  stable  and  healthy  state,  and  pro- 
duces suffering ;  or  whether  a  natural  stimulus  acts  upon  it  when 
in  an  enfeebled  or  unstable  condition,  and  similarly  gives  rise 
to  suffering :  in  both  cases,  there  is,  physically  speaking,  a  dis- 
turbance of  the  equilibrium  of  the  nervous  element,  or  a  reso- 
lution of  it  into  lower  but  more  stable  compounds  ;  or,  psycho- 
logically speaking,  there  is,  in  both  cases,  an  idea  excited  which 
is  attended  with  painful  emotional  qualities — an  idea  unfavour- 
able to  individual  expansion.  In  both  cases  the  pain  is  the  -cry 


J36  THE  EMOTIONS.  [CHAP. 

of  organic  element  for  deliverance.  The  greater  the  disturbance 
of  nervous  element,  however  produced,  the  more  unstable  is  its 
state ;  and  an  instability  of  nervous  element,  implying,  as  it 
does,  a  susceptibility  to  rapid  molecular  or  chemical  retrograde 
metamorphosis,  furnishes  the  most  favourable  conditions  for  the 
production  of  emotion,  passion,  or  commotion,  as  the  term  was  of 
old.  It  is  easy  to  perceive,  then,  how  it  is  that  great  emotion  is 
exceedingly  exhausting — for  the  same  reason,  in  fact,  that  repeated 
electrical  discharges  by  the  gymnotus  or  torpedo  produce  ex- 
haustion ;  it  is  easy  to  perceive,  also,  that  whatever  cause,  moral 
or  physical,  works  an  exhausting  or  depressing  effect  upon  an 
individual,  inclines  him  to  become  emotional. 

The  original  nature  of  nerve  element  is,  however,  as  nothing 
in  the  determination  of  the  special  character  of  the  higher 
emotions,  compared  with  its  acquired  nature  as  this  has  been 
slowly  organized  in  relation  to  the  circumstances  of  life.  Much 
-  discussion  has  taken  place  as  to  whether  an  emotion  is  merely 
a  feeling  of  pleasure  or  pain  accompanying  a  particular  idea ; 
whether,  for  example,  benevolence  is  nothing  more  than  the 
pleasant  feeling  that  accompanies  the  idea  of  accomplishing  the 
good  of  another,  malice  the  feeling  that  attends  the  idea  of 
injuring  another,  and  so  on.  But  there  is  some  danger  here  of 
being  confused  or  misled  by  words  ;  it  certainly  must  be  allowed 
that  there  is  something  in  the  emotion  more  special  than  the 
general  feeling  either  of  pleasure  or  pain:  such  feeling  is 
present,  no  doubt,  but  it  does  not  determine  the  special  character 
of  the  emotion ;  it  is  something  superadded,  which  determines 
only  the  agreeableness  or  disagreeableness  of  the  emotion.  It 
is,  in  reality,  the  specific  character  of  the  idea  which  determines 
the  specific  character  of  the  emotion ;  and  accordingly  emotions 
are  as  many  and  various  as  ideas.  (5)  And  it  has  been  before 
shown  that  the  character  of  the  idea  is  determined  by  the 
nature  of  the  impression  from  without,  and  by  the  nature,  as  it 
has  been  modified  by  a  life  experience,  of  the  reacting  nervous 
centre:  this  now  containing  an  organization  of  ideas  as  its 
acquired  nature,  or  as  the  expression  of  its  due  development. 
How  difficult  it  is  to  explain  matters  from  a  psychological  point 
of  view,  is  easy  to  perceive  ;  while  we  are  in  such  case  con- 
sidering the  relation  of  emotion  to  idea,  they  are  both  concomi- 


VI.J  THE  EMOTIONS.  137 

tant  effects  of  a  deeper  lying  cause.  As  there  are  subjective 
sensations,  so  also  are  there  subjective  emotional  states.  It 
depends  upon  the  nature  of  the  fundamental  elements,  the  in- 
ternal reacting  centre,  and  the  external  impression,  whether  in 
a  given  case  we  shall  have  a  definite  idea  with  little  or  no  emo- 
tional quality,  or  whether  we  shall  have  the  emotional  quality 
so  marked  that  the  idea  is  almost  lost  in  it.  The  hemispherical 
cells  are  confessedly  not  sensitive  to  pain;  still  they  have  a 
sensibility  of  their  own  to  ideas,  and  the  sensibility  which  thus 
declares  the  manner  of  their  affection  is  what  we  call  emotional. 
And  as  there  may  be  a  hypersesthesia  or  an  anaesthesia  of  sense, 
so  also  there  may  be  a  hyperassthesia  or  an  anaesthesia  of  ideas. 
Certainly  there  do  not  appear  to  be  satisfactory  grounds  either 
in  psychology  or  physiology  for  supposing  the  nervous  centres 
of  emotion  to  be  distinct  from  those  of  idea. 

As  we  justly  speak  of  the  tone  of  the  spinal  cord,  by  the 
variations  of  which  its  reactions  are  so  much  affected,  so  we 
may  fairly  also  speak  of  a  psychical  tone,  the  tone  of  the 
supreme  nervous  centres,  the  variations  of  which  so  greatly 
affect  the  character  of  the  mental  states  that  supervene.  And 
as  it  appeared  when  treating  of  the  spinal  cord  that,  apart  from 
its  original  nature  and  accidental  causes  of  disturbance,  the 
tone  of  it  was  determined  by  the  totality  of  impressions  made 
upon  it,  and  of  motor  reactions  thereto,  which  had  been  organized 
in  its  constitution  as  faculties ;  so  with  regard  to  the  supreme 
centres  of  our  mental  life,  from  the  residua  of  past  thoughts, 
feelings,  and  actions,  which  have  been  organized  as  mental 
faculties,  there  results  a  certain  psychical  tone  in  each  individual 
This  is  the  basis  of  the  individual's  conception  of  the  ego — the 
affections  of  which,  therefore,  best  reveal  his  real  nature — a 
conception  which,  so  far  from  being,  as  is  often  said,  fixed  and 
unchanging,  undergoes  gradual  change  with  the  change  of  the 
individual's  relations  as  life  proceeds.  Whosoever  candidly 
reflects  upon  the  striking  modification,  or  rather  revolution,  of 
the  ego,  which  happens  at  the  time  of  puberty  both  in  men  and 
women,  will  surely  not  find  it  hard  to  conceive  how  the  self  may 
imperceptibly  but  surely  change  through  life.  The  education 
and  experience  to  which  any  one  is  subjected  likewise  modify, 
if  less  suddenly,  not  less  certainly,  the  tone  of  his  character.  By 


138  THE  EMOTIONS.  [CHAP. 

constantly  blaming  certain  actions  and  praising  certain  others 
in  their  children,  parents  are  able  so  to  form  their  character 
that,  apart  from  any  reflection,  these  shall  ever  in  after-life  be 
attended  with  a  certain  pleasure  ;  those,  on  the  other  hand,  with 
certain  pain.  Experience  proves  that  the  customs  and  religions 
of  different  nations  differ  most  widely ;  what  one  nation  views 
as  crime,  another  praises  as  virtue  ;  what  one  nation  glorifies  in 
as  a  legitimate  pleasure,  another  reprobates  as  a  shameful  vice  : 
there  is  scarcely  a  single  crime  or  vice  that  has  not  been  exalted 
into  a  religious  observance  by  one  nation  or  other  at  one  period 
or  other  of  the  world's  history.  How  much,  then,  is  the  moral 
feeling  or  conscience  dependent  upon  the  due  educational  deve- 
lopment of  the  mind  !  (6) 

The  manner  in  which  music  affects  some  people,  producing  a 
lively  feeling  of  immediate  pleasure,  calming  mental  agitation 
and  exalting  the  mental  tone,  and  thereby  indirectly  much 
affecting  mental  activity,  affords  an  excellent  example  of  a 
marked  effect  upon  the  psychical  tone  by  means  of  physical 
agency ;  it  might  be  adduced,  if  it  were  necessary,  to  attest  the 
corporeal  nature  of  the  process.  Such  sentiments  as  the  love  of 
wife  and  the  love  of  children,  various  as  they  are  in  kind  and 
degree  in  different  persons,  are  not  definite  emotions  so  much 
as  the  general  tone  of  feeling  resulting  from  certain  relations  in 
life ;  they  represent  a  mental  state  in  which  ideas  in  harmony 
with  the  tone  of  mind  will  be  attended  with  a  pleasant  emotion, 
and  ideas  discordant  with  it  with  a  painful  emotion,  just  as 
harmony  in  music  produces  pleasure  and  discord  produces  pain. 
Again,  the  aesthetic  feelings  are  without  question  the  result  of  a 
good  cultivation,  conscious  development  having  imperceptibly 
become  a  sort  of  instinctive  endowment,  a  refinement  to  which 
vulgarity  of  any  kind  will  be  abhorrent ;  they  are  the  bloom  of 
a  high  culture,  and,  like  the  csensethesis,  represent  a  general 
tone  of  mind  which  cannot  be  described  as  definite  emotion,  but 
in  which  certain  ideas  that  arise  will  have  pleasant  emotional 
qualities.  Reflect,  again,  on  the  powerful  effects  which  the 
aspects  of  nature  produce  upon  philosophic  minds  of  the  highest 
order. .  The  vague  mysterious  feelings  which  such  minds  have, 
as  instinctive  expressions  of  their  fellowship  with  nature,  thrills 
of  that  harmonious  sympathy  with  events  whereby  an  indefinite 


YI.]  TEH  EMOTIONS.  139 

feeling  of  joy  transports  them  in  view  of  certain  of  her  glories, 
or  a  dim  presentiment  of  evil  oppresses  them  under  different 
relations — these  are  vague  psychical  feelings  that  in  reality 
-connote  the  highest  intellectual  acquisition ;  they  are  the  con- 
summate inflorescence  of  the  highest  psychical  development,  the 
supreme  harmonies  of  the  most  exalted  psychical  tone. 

It  is  most  necessary  clearly  to  realize  how  much,  not  the  cere- 
bral centres  only,  but  the  whole  system  of  bodily  nerves,  are 
concerned  in  the  phenomena  of  the  emotional  life.  The  beatings 
of  the  heart,  the  movements  of  respiration,  the  expressions  of  the 
countenance,  the  pallor  of  fear,  or  the  flush  of  anger,  and  the 
effects  upon  all  the  secretions  and  upon  nutrition — all  these  evince 
with  certainty  that  the  organic  life  participates  essentially  in  the 
manifestation  of  emotion.  Before  definite  paths  of  association  of 
ideas,  and  groups  of  ideas,  have  been  organized  through  culture 
and  experience,  every  emotion  tends  to  react  directly  outwards, 
either  upon  the  organs  of  the  organic  life  or  upon  the  organs  of 
the  animal  life.  In  children  and  savages  simple  emotions  are 
observably  easily  excited,  and  as  readily  manifested  in  outward 
display ;  it  is  only  when  a  strong  character  has  been  fashioned 
that  the  power  exists  to  retain  the  emotional  energy  within  the 
sphere  of  the  intellectual  life ;  and  even  in  the  strongest  cha- 
racter it  sometimes  happens  that  an  emotion,  too  powerful  or  too 
suddenly  excited,  will  escape  control  It  has  now  been  sufficiently 
demonstrated,  by  observation  and  experiment,  that  the  cerebro- 
spinal  system  does  exercise  an  influence  over  the  ganglia  imme- 
diately concerned  in  the  phenomena  of  the  organic  life  ;  and  it 
is  quite  in  accordance  with  physiological  observation,  therefore, 
to  admit  that  the  commotion  in  the  nervous  element  of  the 
supreme  centres,  which  an  emotion  implies,  will  affect  the  ner- 
vous centres  of  the  organic  life,  and  through  them  the  organic 
movements,  or  the  more  intimate  processes  of  nutrition.*  In 
fact,  what  has  long  been  popularly  observed  of  the  manner  of 
action  of  the  emotions,  the  experiments  of  Pfluger,  Bernard,  and 
others,  on  the  influence  of  the  cerebro-spinal  system  over  the 
small  arteries ;  and  those  of  Lister,  on  the  movement  of  the 

*  It  is  hard  to  conceive  how  it  should  fail  to  do  so,  if  it  is  true  that  nerves  end 
in  the  parts  they  supply  by  an  actual  continuity  of  substance,  as  is  no\v  main- 
tained. 


140  THE  EMOTIONS.  [CHAP. 

pigment  granules  in  the  stellate  cells  of  the  frog's  skin,  may  be 
said  to  have  experimentally  demonstrated.  Though  a  moderate 
stimulation  of  the  cerebro-spinal  system  appears  to  favour  or 
increase  the  action  of  the  organic  centres,  yet  it  admits  of  no 
question  that  an  excessive  irritation  of  the  higher  centres  does 
produce  an  inhibitory  effect  upon  their  functions  ;  wherein,  again, 
we  may  perceive  a  sufficient  reason  of  the  disease  in  an  organ 
which  is  sometimes  the  result  of  a  prolonged  depressing  passion. 
And  because  the  weak  organ  is  ever  the  sufferer,  because  here,  as 
elsewhere,  to  be  weak  is  to  be  miserable,  the  effect  of  a  passion 
is  generally  experienced  in  his  affected  organ  by  one  who  is  the 
subject  of  any  local  idiosyncrasy ;  it  more  easily  sympathises 
with  the  centric  commotion.  Passion,  in  its  essential  nature, 
really  betokens  the  sympathy  of  the  whole  nervous  system  ;  and 
a  great  disposition  to  passion  means  a  great  disposition  to  such 
sympathy.  It  is  true  that,  in  consequence  of  cultivation,  the 
effects  of  an  emotion  are  usually  limited  to  a  certain  group  of 
muscles,  or  to  some  other  definite  activity ;  but  the  less  the  cul- 
ture, the  more  general  are  the  visible  effects  of  emotion  or  passion : 
in  the  idiot  an  explosion  of  passion  is  sometimes  an  explosion 
of  convulsions. 

But  there  is  another  important  consideration  with  regard  to 
our  emotions.  When  we  put  ourselves  in  the  attitude  that  any 
passion  naturally  occasions,  it  is  most  certain  that  we  acquire 
in  some  degree  that  passion.  In  fact,  as  we  complete  our  intel- 
lectual activity  by  the  participation  of  the  sensory  centres, 
thereby  rendering  our  abstract  ideas  definite  through  a  sensory 
representation  of  them,  so  in  our  emotional  life  any  particular 
passion  is  rendered  stronger  and  more  distinct  by  the  existence 
of  those  bodily  states  which  it  naturally  produces,  and  which  in 
turn,  when  otherwise  produced,  tend  to  engender  it.  Mr.  Braid 
found,  by  experiment  on  patients  whom  he  had  put  in  a  state  of 
hypnotism,  that  by  inducing  attitudes  of  body  natural  to  certain 
passions  he  could  excite  those  passions.  "We  perceive,  then, 
how  close  is  the  sympathy  or  connexion  between  the  organic 
system  and  the  emotional  or  affective  life,  which  supplies  the 
habitual  impulsion  to  activity  ;  while  the  intellectual  life  which, 
as  deliberative,  controls  and  directs  the  activity  of  the  individual, 
has  the  closest  relations  with  the  senses.  It  was  the  recognition 


vi.]  THE  EMOTIONS.  141 

of  the  intimate  connexion  and  mutual  reaction  between  the 
passions  and  the  bodily  life  that  moved  Bichat  to  locate  the 
passions,  as  the  ancients  did,  and  in  common  language  is  now 
sometimes  done,  in  the  organs  of  the  organic  life.  But  although 
there  was  the  just  acknowledgment  of  a  truth  in  this  view,  it  was 
only  part  of  a  truth ;  for,  in  the  first  place,  not  the  organs  of  the 
organic  life  only,  but  those  also  of  the  animal  life,  are  concerned 
in  the  expression  and  production  of  passion ;  and,  in  the  second 
place,  the  feeling  of  the  passion  unquestionably  takes  place  in 
the  brain.  It  is  the  display  of  its  organic  sympathies.  Conse- 
quently, it  is  found  that,  as  the  effect  of  a  depressing  passion  is 
felt  by  the  victim  of  a  local  idiosyncrasy  in  his  weak  organ,  so 
inversely  the  effect  of  a  weak  or  diseased  organ  is  felt  in  the 
brain  by  an  irritability  or  disposition  to  passion,  a  disturbance 
of  the  psychical  tone.  The  phenomena  of  insanity  will  furnish 
the  best  illustrations  of  this  sympathetic  interaction. 

It  may  be  thought,  perhaps,  that  it  would  not  be  amiss  if  some- 
thing were  now  said  of  the  difference  between  passion  and  emotion, 
inasmuch  as  the  terms  have  hitherto  been  used  almost  indif- 
ferently. This,  however,  is  scarcely  necessary  in  dealing  only 
with  their  general  nature,  which  is  fundamentally  the  same ; 
every  so-called  emotion,  when  carried  to  a  certain  pitch,  becomes 
a  veritable  passion.  If  it  were  thought  well  to  distinguish 
them  in  a  special  analysis  of  the  particular  emotions,  as  it  doubt- 
less would  be,  the  ground  of  distinction  would  be  in  the  egoistic  or 
altruistic  character  of  them — names  by  which  Comte  distinguishes 
respectively  those  feelings  which  have  entire  reference  to  self  and 
those  which  have  reference  to  the  good  of  others.  Spinoza,  whose 
admirable  account  of  the  passions  has  never  yet  been  surpassed, 
and  certainly  will  not  easily  be  surpassed,  only  recognises  three 
primitive  passions,  on  the  basis  of  which  all  others  are  founded — 
joy,  sorrow,  and  desire,  (a]  Desire,  he  says,  is  the  very  nature 
or  essence  of  the  individual,  whence  it  is  that  the  joy  or  sorrow 
of  each  individual  differs  from  that  of  another  as  the  nature  01 
essence  of  one  differs  from  that  of  another.  (&)  Joy  is  the  passage 
from  a  less  degree  of  perfection  to  a  greater  degree  of  perfec- 
tion, and  accompanies,  therefore,  all  actions  that  are  called  good. 
(c)  Sorrow  is  the  passage  from  a  greater  degree  of  perfection  to 
a  less  degree  of  perfection,  and  accompanies  all  acts  that  are 
called  evil.  It  will  easily  be  understood,  from  what  has  been 


142  TEE  EMOTIONS.  [CHAP. 

already  said,  how  much  the  particular  character  of  a  passion 
will  depend  upon  the  education ;  how,  according  to  the  difference 
of  his  education  and  circumstances,  one  man  may  repent  bitterly 
of  an  act  of  which  another  boasts  exultantly. 

Here,  again,  it  is  rendered  evident  how  impossible  it  is  to 
deal  satisfactorily  with  the  emotions  by  considering  them  only 
as  accomplished  facts,  and  grouping  them  according  to  their 
characters  as  we  observe  them  in  the  adult  of  ordinary  culti- 
vation. We  are  driven  by  the  psychological  method  to  study 
emotion  under  great  disadvantage,  having  to  examine  the  com- 
plexity of  an  advanced  development  instead  of  following  up,  us 
is  the  true  method,  the  genesis  of  emotion  or  the  plan  of  its 
development.  In  the  classification  of  the  animal  kingdom  the 
study  of  its  plan  of  development  is  now  acknowledged  to  be 
the  only  method  of  settling  the  true  relations  between  one 
animal  and  another :  in  like  manner  the  phenomena  of  mind 
can  only  be  rightly  grounded  by  an  analysis  of  their  develop- 
ment. Whosoever  aspires  to  give  an  adequate  account  of  the 
emotions  must  devote  himself,  then,  to  a  careful  investigation  of 
their  simplest  manifestations  in  the  higher  members  of  the 
animal  kingdom,  of  the  different  grades  of  their  evolution  in 
the  savage  and  the  civilized  person,  in  the  child  and  the  adult, 
the  woman  and  the  man,  the  idiot  and  him  who  is  in  his  right 
mind,  and  patiently  unfold  that  progressive  specialization  and 
increasing  complexity  which  prevail  here  as  in  every  other 
department  of  organic  development.  Like  as  ideas  are  blended, 
or  coalesce,  and  connected  in  groups  and  series  so  that  by  com- 
plex development  a  character  is  formed,  so  are  the  feelings 
belonging  to  the  ideas  and  the  desires  accompanying  them 
blended  and  grouped  in  a  corresponding  complexity,  and  incli- 
nations or  disinclinations  of  every  variety  and  complexity  are 
thus  formed  as  a  part  of  the  character.  Again,  the  desire 
naturally  attaching  to  a  certain  aim  is  often  transferred  after 
a  time  to  the  means  by  which  that  aim  is  attained,  so  that 
there  ensue  in  this  way  manifold  secondary  formations  :  the 
end  of  wealth  is  to  give  enjoyment  and  comfort ;  but  how  often 
does  a  passion  for  the  means  oversway  the  end !  By  looking 
to  the  end  which  is  desirable,  an  act  naturally  very  distasteful, 
but  which  is  necessary  as  means,  may,  by  habituation,  be  ren- 
dered indifferent  or  even  pleasing  ;  and  many  scoundrels  are  thus 


vi.]  THE  EMOTIONS.  J43 

gradually  fashioned,  themselves  unaware  of  the  grievous  issue 
in  which  many  slight  effects  have  imperceptibly  culminated.* 

As  it  is  in  the  individual,  so  it  is  through  generations.  The 
internal  organic  adaptations  which  take  place  in  correspondence 
with  differences  in  the  external  conditions  of  existence,  are 
sometimes  observedly  propagated  through  generations,  and  that 
which  was  a  conscious  acquisition  in  the  parent  becomes  more 
or  less  an  innate  endowment  of  the  offspring.  It  seems  to 
admit  of  little  doubt  that  this  law  works  in  the  improvement 
of  the  human  brain  in  the  course  of  generations  :  as  those  who 
migrate  from  their  native  land  to  other  and  different  climes 
do  in  course  of  time  endow  their  progeny  with  an  inherent 
adaptability  to  the  new  conditions,  so  that  they  do  not  perish, 
but  flourish  in  them ;  or  as  the  young  fox  or  young  dog  inherits 
as  an  instinct  the  cunning  which  its  ancestors  have  slowly 
acquired  by  experience  ;  so  do  such  records  as  are  available 
prove  that  the  brain  of  man  has  undergone  considerable  develop- 
ment in  the  course  of  generations.  Between  the  inborn  moral 
nature  of  the  well-constituted  civilized  person  and  the  brutal 
nature  of  the  lowest  savage,  all  question  of  education  and  culti- 
vation put  aside,  the  difference  as  a  physical  fact  is  not  less 
than  that  which  often  exists  between  one  species  of  animal 
and  another.  The  exalted  ideas  of  justice,  virtue,  mercy— 
which  are  acquired  in  the  course  of  a  true  civilization,  and 
which  the  lowest  savage  has  not — do,  without  doubt,  add  some- 
thing to  the  nervous  endowment  of  succeeding  generations ;  not 
only  is  there  in  their  constitution  the  potentiality  of  such  ideas, 
which  there  is  not  in  the  lowest  savage,  but  there  is  generated 
an  instinctive  quality  of  mind,  an  excellent  tone  of  feeling, 
which  rebels  against  injustice  of  any  kind  :  there  is  formed  the 

*  Nemo  repentefuit  turpimmus  is  really  the  expression  of  the  physical  nature 
of  the  growth  of  character. 

"  Custom        .... 

Constrains  e'en  stubborn  Nature  to  obey  ; 
"Whom  dispossessing  oft  he  doth  essay 
To  govern  in  her  right  ;  and  with  a  pace 
So  soft  and  gentle  does  he  win  his  way, 
That  she  unawares  is  caught  in  his  embrace, 
And  tho'  deflowered  and  thralled  nought  feels  her  foul  disgrace. 
Stanza  of  Gilbert  Vfest,  quoted  by  Coleridge  in  his 
BiograpJda  Literaria. 


144  THE  EMOTIONS.  [CHAP. 

potentiality  of  a  so-called  moral  sense.  Thus  it  is  that  the  indi- 
vidual rightly  developing  in  his  generation  is,  "by  virtue  of  the 
laws  of  hereditary  action,  ordaining  or  determining  what  shall 
be  pre-ordained  or  pre-determined  in  the  original  nature  of  the 
individual  of  a  future  age.  But  are  we  then  to  lose  sight  of 
the  physical  aspect  of  this  development  ?  Certainly  not ;  the 
moral  feeling  betokens  an  improved  quality,  or  higher  kind  of 
nervous  element,  which  ensues  in  the  course  of  a  due  develop- 
ment, and  which  may  easily  again  be  disturbed  by  a  slight 
physical  disturbance  of  the  nervous  element.  In  the  exaltation 
of  mankind  through  generations,  in  the  progress  of  humanization, 
so  to  speak,  this  height  of  excellence  is  reached  :  in  the  dete- 
rioration or  degeneration  of  mankind,  as  exhibited  in  the  down- 
ward course  of  insanity  proceeding  through  generations,  one  of 
the  earliest  evil  symptoms  is,  as  we  shall  hereafter  see,  the  loss 
of  this  virtue — the  destruction  of  the  moral  or  altruistic  feeling. 
The  intimate  and  essential  relation  of  emotions  to  the  ideas, 
which  they  equal  in  number  and  variety,  is  sufficient  to  prove 
that  the  law  of  progress  from  the  general  and  simple  to  the 
special  and  complex,  prevails  in  their  development.  If  such 
relation  were  not  a  necessary  one,  it  would  still  be  possible  to 
display  that  manner  of  evolution  from  a  consideration  of  the 
emotions  themselves.  And  the  recognition  of  this  increasing 
specialization  and  complexity  in  the  function  compels  us  to 
assume  a  corresponding  development  in  the  delicate  organi- 
zation of  the  nervous  structure,  although  by  reason  of  the 
imperfection  of  our  means  of  investigation  we  are  not  yet  able 
to  trace  a  process  of  such  delicacy  in  these  inmost  recesses  to 
which  our  senses  have  not  gained  entrance. 


XOTES. 

1  (p.  129). — "  Notre  ame  fait  certaines  actions  et  souffre  certaines 
passions  ;  savoir :  en  taut  qu'elle  a  des  idees  adequates,  elle  fait  cer- 
taines actions;  et  en  tant  qu'elle  a  des  idees  inadequates,  elle  souffre 
certaines  passions." — Spinoza,  Des  Passions,  Prop.  I. 

2  (p.  131). — "  Among  so  many  dangers,  therefore,  as  the  natural  lusts 
of  men  do  daily  threaten  each,  other  withal,  to  have  a  care  of  one's  self 
is  so  far  from  being  a  matter  scornfully  to  be  looked  upon,  that  one 
has  neither  the  power  nor  wish  to  have  done  otherwise.     For  every 


vi.J  THE  EMOTIONS. 


145 


man  is  desirous  of  what  is  good  for  him,  and  shuns  what  is  evil,  "but 
chiefly  the  chiefest  of  natural  evils,  which  is  death ;  and  this  he  doth 
by  a  certain  impulsion  of  nature,  no  less  than  that  whereby  a  stone 
moves  downwards." — Hobbes,  vol.  ii.  p.  8. 

3  (p.  131). — "Le  desir,  c'est  1'appetit,  avec  conscience  de  lui-meme. 
II  rcsulte  de  tout  cela  que  ce  qui  fonde  1'effort,  le  vouloir,  1'appetit,  le 
desir,  ce  n'est  pas  qu'on  ait  juge  qu'une  chose  est  bonne  :  mais,  au 
contraire,    on   juge   qu'r.ne  chose  est  bonne  par  cela  memo  qu'on  y 
tend  par  I'eflbrt,  le  vouloir,  1'appetit,  le  desir." — Spinoza,  Des  Passions, 
Schol.  to  Prop.  ix. 

4  (p.  134). — "But  we  must  frankly  admit,  on  consideration,  that  the 
political  rule  of  intelligence  is  hostile  to  human  progression.  Mind  must 
tend  more  and  more  to  the  supreme  direction  of  affairs ;  but  it  can 
never  attain  it,  owing  to  the  imperfection  of  our  organism,  in  which 
the  intellectual  life  is  the  feeblest  part ;  and  thus  it  appears  that  the 
real  office  of  mind  is  deliberative ;  that  is,  to  moderate  the  material 
preponderance,  and  not  to  impart  its  habitual  impulsion." — Comte, 
Positive  Philosophy,  vol.  ii.  p.  210. 

5  (p.  136). — "  For  it  is  not  his  disputations  about  pleasure  and  pain 
that  can  satisfy  this  inquiry ;  no  more  than  he  who  should  generally 
handle  the  nature  of  light  can  be  said  to  handle  the  nature  of  par- 
ticular colours ;  for  pleasure  and  pain  are  to  the  particular  affections 
as  light  is  to  particular  colours." — Bacon,  De  Augment  Scient. 

"  Autant  il  y  a  d'espece  d'objets  qui  nous  affectent,  autant  il  faut 
reconnaitre  d'especes  de  joie,  de  tristesse,  et  de  desir;  et  en  g£n£ral 
de  toutes  les  passions  qui  sont  composees  de  celles-la,  comrne  la  fluc- 
tuation, par  exemple,  ou  qui  en  derivent,  comme  1'amour,  la  haine, 
1'esperance,  la  crainte,"  &c. — Spinoza,  Des  Passions. 

6  (p.  138). — "Mais  il  faut  en  outre  remarquer  ici  qu'il  n'est  r.ullement 
surprenant  que  la  tristesse  accompagne  tous  les  actes  qu'on  a  continue 
d'appeler   mauvais,    et   la  joie   tous   ceux   qu'on   nomme   Ions.     On 
concoit  en  effet  par  ce  qui  precede  que  tout  cela  depend  surtout  de 
1'education.      Les   parents,    en   blamant   certaines   actions,    et   repri- 
mandant  souvent  leurs  enfants  pour  les  avoir  commises,  et  au  contraire 
en  louant  et  en  conseillant  d'autres  actions,  ont  si  bien  fait  que  la 
tristesse  accompagne  toujours   celles-la  et  la  joie  toujours    celles-ci. 
L'experience  confirme  cette  explication.     La  coutume  et  la  religion  no 
sont  pas  les  memes  pour  tous  les  hommes  :  ce  qui  est  sacre  pour  les 
uns  est  profane  pour  les  autres,  et  les  choses  honnetes  chez  un  peuple 
sont  honteuses  chez  un  autre  peuple.     Chacun  se  repent  done  ou  so 
glorifie  d'une  action  suivant  l'e"ducation  qu'il  a  regue." — Spinoza,  Dei 
Passions,  p.  159. 

11 


VOLITION. 

"Les  homines  se  trompent  en  ce  point  qu'ils  pensent  etre  litres.  Or,  en  quoi 
consists  une  telle  ^opinion  ?  En  cela  seulement  qu'ils  out  conscience  de  leurs 
actions  et  ignorent  les  causes  qui  les  determinent.  L'idee  que  les  horames  se 
font  de  leur  liberte  vient  done  de  ce  qu'ils  ne  connaissent  point  la  cause  de  leurs 
actions,  car  dire  qu'elles  dependent  de  la  volonte,  ce  sont  la  des  mots  auxquels  on 
n'attache  aucune  idee.  Quelle  est  en  effet  la  nature  de  la  volonte,  et  comment 
meut-elle  le  corps,  c'est  ce  que  tout  le  nionde  ignore,  et  ceux  qui  elevent  d'autres 
pretentious  et  parlent  des  sieges  de  Tame  et  de  ses  demeures  pretent  \  lire  ou 
font  pitie." — Spinoza. 

"  En  tout  ce  que  jepuis  dire  a  ceux  qui  croient  qu'ils  peuvent  parler,  se  taire,  en 
un  mot,  agir  en  vertu  d'une  libre  decision  de  1'ame,  c'est  qu'ils  revent  les  yeux 
ouverts." — Ibid. 

TT  is  strange  to  see  how  some,  who  confidently  base  their 
-*-  argument  for  the  existence  of  a  God  on  the  ground  that 
everything  in  nature  must  have  a  cause,  are  content,  in  their 
zeal  for  free-will,  to  speak  of  the  will  as  if  it  were  self-deter- 
mined and  had  no  cause.  As  thus  vulgarly  used,  the  term  Will 
has  no  definite  meaning,  and  certainly  is  not  applicable  to  any 
concrete  reality  in  nature,  where,  in  the  matter  of  will,  as  in 
every  other  matter,  we  perceive  effect  witnessing  to  cause,  and 
varying  according  as  the  cause  varies. 

Previous  considerations  must  have  sufficiently  proved  the 
necessity  of  modifying  the  notion  commonly  entertained  of  the 
will  as  a  single,  undecomposable  faculty  of  constant  and  uniform 
power ;  for  they  have  shown  that  under  the  category  of  voluntary 
acts,  as  commonly  made,  are  included  very  different  kinds  of 
actions,  proceeding  from  different  nervous  centres.  A  consider- 
able proportion  of  the  daily  actions  of  life  is  confessedly  due  to 
the  automatic  faculty  of  the  spinal  cord  ;  the  sensory  centres  are 
clearly  the  independent  causes  of  other  actions ;  while  many  of 
the  remaining  actions  that  would  by  most  people  be  deemed 


CHAP,  vii.]  VOLITION.  147 

volitional,  are  really  respondent  to  an  idea  or  emotion.  This 
just  discrimination  is,  notwithstanding,  entirely  neglected  by 
those  who  take  the  metaphysical  view  of  will — by  them,  as  usual, 
an  abstraction  from  the  particular  is  converted  into  an  entity, 
and  then  allowed  to  tyrannize  in  the  most  despotic  manner  over 
the  understanding.  The  metaphysical  essence  thus  created  has 
no  other  relation  to  a  particular  or  concrete  act  of  will,  than, 
using  Spinoza's  illustration,  stoneness  to  a  particular  stone,  man 
to  Peter  or  Paul. 

It  is  obviously,  then,  of  importance,  in  the  first  place  to  get 
rid  of  the  notion  of  an  ideal  will,  unaffected  by  physical  con- 
ditions, as  existing  apart  from  a  particular  concrete  act  of  will, 
which  varies  according  to  physical  conditions.  "When  a  definite 
act  of  will  is  the  result  of  a  certain  reflection,  it  represents  physi- 
cally an  available  or  a  liberated  force,  consequent  on  the  com- 
munication of  activity  from  one  cell  or  group  of  cells  to  other 
cells  or  groups  of  cells  within  the  cortical  layers  of  the  hemi- 
spheres. Any  modification,  therefore,  of  the  condition  of  these 
centres  may,  and  notably  does,  impede  reflection,  and  affect  the 
resultant  power  of  will — a  power  which,  in  reality,  is  seen  to 
differ  both  in  quantity  and  quality  in  different  persons,  and  in 
the  same  person,  according  to  the  varying  conditions  of  the  ner- 
vous substratum.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  speak  psycholo- 
gically, the  definite  will  is  the  final  issue  of  the  process  of  reflec- 
tion or  deliberation,  which  a  man's  life-culture  has  rendered  him 
capable  of,  and  represents  a  conception  of  the  result  with  desire, 
such  as  has  been  determined  by  the  character  of  the  reflection. 
A  man  can  never  will  a  virtuous  end  into  whose  reflection  ideas 
of  virtue  do  not  enter,  nor  can  any  one  will  a  bestial  act  of  vice 
whose  mind  is  not  familiar  with  ideas  of  lewdness.  The  will 
appears,  then,  to  be  nothing  but  the  desire,  or  aversion,  sufficiently 
strong  to  produce  an  action  after  reflection  or  deliberation — an 
action  that,  as  Hartley  observes,  is  not  automatic  primarily  or 
secondarily.*^)  Since,  then,  it  is  generated  by  the  preceding  asso- 
ciation, it  must  needs  differ  greatly  in  quality  and  quantity, 
according  to  the  extent  and  character  of  the  association,  as  this 

*  "Appetite,  therefore,  and  aversion  are  simply  so  called  as  long  as  they  follow 
not  deliberation.  But  if  deliberation  have  gone  before,  then  the  last  act  of  it,  if 
it  be  appetite,  is  called  will;  if  aversion,  unwillingness." — Hobles. 


148  VOLITION.  [CHAP. 

has  been  established  by  cultivation,  or  is  temporarily  modified  by 
bodily  conditions.  Every  one  can  easily  perceive  this  to  be  true 
of  the  will  of  an  idiot  or  a  child,  which  is  palpably  a  very  dif- 
ferent matter  from  that  of  a  well-cultivated  adult  ;^and  he  must 
be  very  much  blinded  by  metaphysical  conceptions,  who  fails  to 
recognise  the  infinite  variations  in  the  power  of  will  which  any 
given  individual  exhibits  at  different  times  or  in  different  rela- 
tions. When  one  of  the  higher  senses  is  wanting  in  any  one,  he 
necessarily  wants  also  the  ideas,  feelings,  desires,  and  will,  which 
arise  out  of  the  perceptions  of  this  sense.  The  blind  man  cannot 
know  the  variety  and  beauty  of  colouring  in  nature,  nor  can  he 
will  in  regard  to  those  external  relations  which  are  revealed  only 
through  the  sense  of  sight.  Because,  however,  he  knows  not 
what  he  lacks,  he  does  not  consider  his  will  inferior  in  quality, 
less  complete,  or  less  free.  Were  an  additional  sense  conferred 
upon  any  one,  it  would  doubtless  soon  teach  him  how  much 
might  yet  be  added  to  the  will,  how  little  his  boasted  freedom 
is,  and  might,  perhaps,  make  him  wonder  much  that  he  should 
ever  have  thought  himself  free. 

When  is  it  that  man  is  most  persuaded  that  he  speaks  or  acts 
with  full  freedom  of  will  ?  When  he  is  drunk,  or  mad,  or  is 
dreaming.  It  mny  be  a  reflection,  then,  worth  dwelling  upon, 
that  man  thinks  himself  most  free  when  he  is  most  a  slave ;  but 
at  any  moment,  in  whatever  mood  he  be,  he  would  affirm  that 
he  is  free.  A  drunken  man  judges  very  differently  from  what  he 
does  in  his  sober  senses,  but  is  he  in  his  own  estimation  less  free 
at  the  time  ?  Passion  notoriously  perverts  the  judgment,  warp- 
ing it  this  way  or  that ;  but  will  any  appeal  to  the  passionate 
man  elicit  from  him  a  confession  that  he  is  not  acting  with 
perfect  liberty?  Place  the  very  same  arguments  before  a  man 
when  he  is  elated  by  some  joyous,  or  depressed  by  some  grievous 
event,  when  he  is  in  the  full  flow  of  vigorous  health,  or  when  he 
is  prostrate  on  the  bed  of  sickness,  or  of  death,  and  how  different 
would  be  his  judgment  upon  them;  but  whatever  others  may 
think  of  him,  he  will  hold  for  certain  the  conclusion  of  the 
moment,  just  as  a  man  in  his  sleep  is  fully  persuaded  of  the 
reality  of  his  dreams.  While  the  looker-on  can  often  predict 
how  a  madman  will  act  under  certain  circumstances,  with  as 
much  certainty  as  he  can  predict  an  event  conformable  to  a 


vii.]  VOLITION.  149 

known  law  of  nature, — who  thinks  himself  so  free  as  does  the 
madman  ?  Whence  comes  this  false  opinion  ?  It  arises  plainly 
from  this :  that  consciousness  reveals  the  particular  state  of 
mind  of  the  moment,  but  does  not  reveal  the  long  series  of  causes 
on  which  it  depends.  It  is  a  deliberate  fooling  of  one's  self  to 
say  that  actions  depend  upon  the  will,  and  then  not  to  ask  upon 
what  the  wTill  depends  !  It  is  as  though,  says  Leibnitz,  the  needle 
should  take  pleasure  in  moving  towards  the  pole,  not  perceiving 
the  insensible  motions  of  the  magnetic  matter  on  which  it 
depends.  As  in  nature  we  pass  from  event  to  cause,  and  from 
this  cause  again  to  an  antecedent  one,  and  so  on  till  we  are 
driven  to  a  great  first  cause,  so,  in  the  sincere  observation  of  the 
mind,  we  see  that  it  is  determined  to  will  this  or  that  by  a  cause 
or  motive,  which  is  again  determined  by  another,  this  again  by 
another,  and  so  on  till  we  have  gone  through  the  whole  series  of 
desires,  aversions,  hopes,  and  fears,  the  sum  of  which  is  delibera- 
tion, and  that  have  preceded  the  last  appetite  or  aversion,  which 
we  call  an  act  of  will.  Those  who  fondly  think  they  act  with 
free  will,  says  Spinoza,  dream  with  their  eyes  open. 

Isow,  if  the  final  reaction  after  deliberation,  which  we  call 
will,  is,  like  other  modes  of  reaction  of  nerve  element  previously 
described,  a  resultant  of  a  certain  molecular  change  in  a  definitely 
constituted  nervous  centre,  then  all  the  design  exhibited  in  any 
given  act  of  will  must,  like  the  design  displayed  in  the  function 
of  the  spinal  cells,  or  the  cells  of  the  sensory  centres,  be  a 
physical  result  of  a  particular  intimate  constitution  or  organiza- 
tion of  nervous  matter.  In  other  words,  the  act  of  will  which 
is  the  final  expression  of  a  process  of  reflection  must  needs 
contain  a  conception  of  the  end  desired — such  a  conception  as 
has  been  determined  by  the  nature  of  the  reflection ;  the  con- 
ception of  the  result,  or  the  design,  in  the  act  of  will  constituting, 
in  fact,  the  essential  character  of  the  particular  volition.*  The 
design,  then,  which  a  looker-on  discovers  in  any  act  of  will — and, 
be  it  remembered,  there  is  no  actual  volition  apart  from  the 

*  In  order  that  desire  may  become  action  for  its  giatification,  a  consciousness 
of  the  result  of  the  action  is  necessary — in  other  words,  a  conception  of  the  aim  of 
it.  The  desire,  therefore,  gives  the  special  impulse,  and  the  particular  act  of  will 
is  not  the  determining  agent,  but  is  the  result  determined  by  the  impulse  acting 
in  conformity  with  the  conception  of  the  aim  to  be  attained. 


150  FOLITION.  [CHAP. 

particular  volition — will  depend  upon  the  nature  of  the  indi- 
vidual whom  he  is  observing,  as  that  nature  has  been  inherited, 
and  subsequently  developed  by  the  experience  of  life.  The 
idiocy  of  any  one,  or  his  congenital  inability  to  adapt  himself 
to  external  relations  by  correspondences  of  internal  cerebral 
reaction,  is  a  physical  fact :  there  is  no  design  in  many  of  the 
idiot's  conscious  acts,  because  such  quality  or  property  has  not 
been  built  up  by  cultivation  as  a  faculty  of  the  supreme  nervous 
centres,  a  congenital  defect  of  constitution  having  made  such 
organization  impossible  ;  in  other  words,  the  idiot  is,  by  defect 
of  nature,  incapacitated  from  acquiring  reflection,  and  cannot, 
therefore,  have  in  his  mind  the  conception  of  a  result  to  be 
attained,  cannot  display  conscious  design.  But  the  design  mani- 
fest in  any  voluntary  act  of  the  best  cultivated  mind  is  likewise 
physical  necessity  :  in  consequence  of  reacting  cerebral  adapta- 
tions to  the  varieties  of  external  impressions,  reflection  has,  as 
already  set  forth,  been  organized  as  a  development  of  the 
supreme  nervous  centres,  or,  in  other  words,  as  a  faculty  of  the 
mind ;  and  according  to  the  extent  and  kind  of  the  reflection 
will  be  the  completeness  of  the  conception  of  the  end  to  be 
attained,  or  the  degree  of  design  discoverable  in  any  act  of  will. 
The  particular  volition  and  whatever  it  contains,  whether  of 
folly  or  design,  is  a  product  of  the  organized  residua  of  all  former 
like  volitions,  excited  into  activity  by  the  appropriate  stimulus. 
It  has  been  necessary  to  lay  stress  upon  this  troublesome 
question  of  design,  because  mistaken  notions  with  regard  to  it 
appear  to  have  been  at  the  bottom  of  much  error  in  philosophy. 
The  design  manifest  in  a  mental  act  has  been  supposed  to  evince 
a  power  which  transcended  or  anticipated  experience,  instead  of 
one  that  actually  conforms  in  its  genesis  to  experience ;  and  the 
metaphysical  conception  of  will  as  a  fixed  and  undecomposable 
entity,  in  which  was  no  variability  nor  the  shadow  of  a  turning, 
is  greatly  indebted  for  its  origin  to  that  error.  The  mischievous 
doctrine  of  final  causes  which  Bacon,  Comte,  Spinoza,  Descartes, 
and  others  scarcely  less  great,  all  agree  to  have  done  so  much 
harm  in  philosophy,  has  sprung  from  erroneous  views  of  the 
nature  of  design.  Supposing  that  the  argument  from  design  as 
to  the  existence  of  will  as  a  metaphysical  entity  were  pressed  to 
its  logical  consequences,  what  must  be  the  result  ?  Nothing  less 


vii.]  VOLITION.  151 

than  this, — that  the  animal,  with,  its  marvellous  instinct  of 
instant  adaptation  to  the  most  complex  and  unfamiliar  condi- 
tions, is  possessed  of  a  higher  immaterial  principle  than  the 
helpless  child  or  the  en-ing  adult.  "We  know  right  well,  however, 
that  the  instinct  of  the  animal  is  sometimes  positively  traceable 
to  the  acquired  power  of  former  generations ;  that  it  has  been 
observably  built  up  in  the  constitution  of  the  nervous  centres, 
and  then  transmitted  as  an  innate  endowment.  It  is  exactly 
the  same  with  the  design  that  is  formed  within  the  term  of  an 
individual  life,  and  which  ever  testifies  to  the  previous  cultiva- 
tion of  the  individual ;  the  more  cultivated  the  mind  and  the 
more  varied  the  experience,  the  better  developed  is  the  will  and 
the  stronger  its  co-ordinating  power  over  the  thoughts,  feelings, 
and  actions,  not  otherwise,  in  truth,  than  as  the  co-ordinate 
reflex  action  of  the  spinal  cord  is  developed  by  experience  and 
culture.  Design,  therefore,  when  its  nature  is  fairly  analysed, 
so  far  from  tending  to  make  the  will  a  fixed  metaphysical 
entity,  goes  really  to  prove  that  the  will  is  an  insensibly  organized 
result,  of  varying  value. 

Having  now  adduced  sufficient  reasons  to  prove  that  the  will 
is  not  a  self-generating,  self-sufficing  force  of  constant  quantity, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  a  force  varying  in  quantity  and  quality, 
and,  like  every  other  natural  force,  determined  by  antecedent 
causes,  we  may  proceed  to  consider  what  power  it  actually  has 
in  our  mental  and  bodily  life.  It  is  manifestly  ordained  that 
the  will,  as  the  highest  mode  of  energy  of  nerve  element,  should 
control  the  inferior  modes  of  energy  by  operating  downwards 
upon  their  subordinate  centres :  the  anatomical  disposition  of 
the  nervous  system  is  in  conformity  with  what  psychological 
observation  teaches.  But  the  undoubted  fact,  that  the  will  of  a 
man  can  and  does  control  inferior  functions,  has  led  to  a  very- 
extravagant  and  ill-founded  notion  as  to  its  autocratic  power ; 
and  it  must  be  allowed  that  not  a  little  windy  nonsense  has 
been  written  concerning  its  authority.  Assuredly  it  is  no  irre- 
sponsible despot  in  any  mind,  but  is  ever  most  obedient  where 
it  has  most  power;  it  conquers  by  obeying.  Let  us,  then,  con- 
sider what  the  power  of  the  will  is  (1)  over  the  movements,  and 
(2)  over  mental  operations,  the  two  departments  in  which  its 
rule  is  felt. 


152  VOLITION.  [CHAP. 

1.  (a)  The  will  lias  no  power  whatever  over  certain  move- 
ments that  are  essential  to  the  continuance  of  life.  Not  only  do 
such  motions  as  those  of  the  heart  and  the  intestines  go  on 
without  any  co-operation  of  the  will  and  in  spite  of  any  inter- 
vention on  its  part,  but  movements  that  are  only  microscopically 
visible,  such  as  the  contractions  of  the  small  arteries,  which  are 
of  so  great  importance  in  nutrition,  are  not  under  its  direct 
influence.  Nature  has  been  far  too  prudent  to  rely  upon  such 
an  uncertain  force  for  the  movements  essential  to  the  continuance 
of  life,  or  to  admit  its  injurious  interference :  let  a  man  try  to 
asphyxiate  himself  by  voluntarily  restraining  the  respiratory 
movements,  and  he  will  learn  a  lesson  as  to  the  impotency  of 
will  which  he  might  usefully  remember  when  studying  mental 
phenomena.  We  say  nothing  here  of  those  insensible  molecular 
movements  of  the  physiological  elements  which,  like  thermal 
oscillations,  are  yet  impenetrable  to  sense,  but  which  are  un- 
doubtedly at  the  foundation  of  all  visible  vital  actions. 

(&)  The  will  has  no  power  to  effect  movements  that  are  con- 
fessedly voluntary,  until  they  have  been  very  carefully  acquired 
by  practice.  Every  one  knows  that  the  theory  of  a  particular 
skill  of  movement  is  a  very  different  matter  from  the  practice  of 
it,  and  that  the  complete  capacity  of  accomplishing  the  act  is 
gained,  not  simply  by  desiring  and  willing  it,  but  by  patient 
exercise  raid  cultivation ;  the  faculty  of  the  movement  is  thus 
gradually  organized  in  the  proper  nervous  centre.  A  special  and 
complex  act,  never  hitherto  attempted,  will  be  as  little  likely  to 
be  carried  out,  in  obedience  to  the  commands  of  the  so-called 
"  autocrat  of  the  mind,"  as  a  determination  to  fly.* 

(c)  When  the  will  does  dictate  a  movement,  it  is  the  event 
which  is  determined  ;  it  has  no  direct  control  over  the  means  by 
which  the  result  is  effected ;  so  that  it  may  even  happen,  and 
does  happen,  that  in  a  man  struck  with  a  palsy  of  his  limbs,  the 
will,  all  unaware  of  its  impotency,  commands  a  result  which 
never  takes  place.  Questionless  some  would  still  not  shrink 

*  "  We  know  how  slowly  the  child  acquires  the  power  of  so  balancing  his  body 
as  to  hold  it  erect."  .  .  .  .  "  "We  observe  how  slowly  the  child  learns  to  perform, 
with  the  requisite  precision,  the  contractions  on  which  the  operation  of  walking 

depends." " There  is  another  very  familiar  instance,  thut  of  learning  to 

write." — J.  Mill,  Analysis  of  the  Human  Mind,  p.  271-273. 


vii.]  VOLITION.  153 

from  affirming  that  consciousness  never  deceives.  When  the 
will  dictates  a  certain  event,  its  power  is  propagated,  first  through 
certain  nerves,  and  then  through  them  to  certain  muscles,  in  a 
manner  of  which  we  have  no  consciousness  whatever  :  all  we  do 
know  is,  that  if  we  wish  to  select  a  certain  muscle,  and  put  it 
singly  in  action,  we  have  not  the  power  to  do  so,  and  that,  if 
certain  movements  have  been  habitually  associated,  it  is  a  very 
hard  matter  to  dissociate  them — a  thing  which  a  simple  effort 
of  the  will  certainly  will  not  do,  but  which  a  disease  like 
chorea  will  sometimes  do  in  spite  of  the  will. 

2.  The  extent  of  voluntary  power  over  the  mental  operations 
is  not  nearly  so  great  as  is  popularly  assumed ;  much  the  same 
thing  happening  here  as  in  its  influence  over  movements.  It 
will  not  be  difficult  to  understand  how  this  should  be  so,  if  we 
reflect  that  the  immediate  action  of  the  will,  even  when  dictating 
movements,  is  not  upon  muscles,  but  upon  the  motor  grey  nuclei, 
or  the  nervous  centres  of  movement ;  that  in  both  cases,  there- 
fore, the  immediate  operation  is  alike  upon  ganglionic  cells, 
which  are,  in  one  case,  the  centres  of  ideas,  in  the  other  the 
centres  of  movements.(2) 

(a)  As  the  formation  of  our  ideas  gradually  takes  place 
through  experience,  and  as  the  association  between  ideas  is  also 
effected  in  accordance  with  experience,  both  processes  being 
based  in  the  organic  life  and  beyond  the  domain  of  consciousness, 
it  is  plain  that  the  will  does  not  determine  either  the  material  of 
thought  or  the  laws  of  the  interworking  of  ideas  :  it  must  accept 
as  accomplished  facts,  as  organized  results,  the  ideas  and  the 
manner  of  their  association.  As  with  movements,  so  here,  the 
will  has  no  control  over  the  means  by  which  it  works  :  it  cannot 
dissociate  firmly  established  connexions,  nor  can  it  determine  a 
new  train  of  ideas  without  the  first  link  of  it  being  in  the 
thoughts ;  and  when  the  first  link,  however  originated,  is,  so  to 
speak,  grasped,  the  train  of  ideas  initiated  is  not  irregular  and 
alterable  at  will,  but  definite,  in  stern  accordance  with  an  order 
and  system  previously  established  by  cultivation.*  The  will 

*  "  Deliberation  and  investigation  are  like  the  hunting  of  a  hound  ;  he  moves 
and  sniffs  about  by  his  own  activity,  but  the  sceut  he  finds  is  not  laid,  nor  the 
trail  he  follows  drawn  by  himself.  The  mind  only  begins  a  train  of  thinking,  or 
keeps  it  in  one  particular  track,  but  the  thoughts  introduce  one  another  sue- 


154  VOLITION.  [CHAP. 

thus  presupposes  definite  and  fixed  series  of  ideas  formed  in  the 
mind,  series  in  which,  without  individual  co-operation,  one  idea 
must  definitely  and  of  necessity  follow  another  as  one  wave 
necessarily  produces  another  as  itself  disappears.  There  is  an 
order  or  a  necessity  in  the  mental  organization  of  a  sane  person, 
then,  reflecting  the  order  or  necessity  in  the  co-existence  and  suc- 
cession of  events  in  external  nature  ;  and  the  will  can  as  little 
control  the  fundamental  laws  of  the  one  as  it  can  those  of  the 
other.  Certainly  it  is  not  absolutely  powerless  in  the  mind,  any 
more  than  it  is  absolutely  powerless  in  nature  ;  by  recognition 
of  the  laws  that  prevail  it  can  arrange  conditions  so  as  to  pro- 
duce secondarily  considerable  modification  of  their  action ;  it 
may  thus  avail  itself  of  them  for  its  own  profit,  using  their 
power  in  an  enlightened  manner  to  aid  its  development :  in  the 
one  case  as  in  the  other  it  conquers  only  by  obeying. 
True  liberty,  as  Milton  expresses  it, — 

"Always  with  right  reason  dwells 
Twinn'd,  and  from  her  hath  no  dividual  being." 

(J)  Thus  we  come  to  a  second  consideration  in  regard  to  the 
power  of  the  will :  it  is  that  those  who  so  unduly  exact  it  do 
most  unjustly  derive  their  arguments  entirely  from  the  self- 
consciousness  of  a  well-cultivated  mind,  and  altogether  neglect 
the  instances  of  its  simplest  manifestations.  It  is  simple  justice 
to  insist  upon  a  reference  to  the  earlier  stages  of  development  of 
the  cultivated  mind,  or  to  mind  in  its  least  cultivated  state,  as 
offering  the  simplest  and  most  favourable  instance  for  a  correct 
induction.  Will  any  one  be  so  bold  as  to  maintain  that  there 
exists  volitional  control  over  the  thoughts  in  the  young  child  or 
in  the  idiot  ?  Is  any  one  so  ignorant  of  the  genesis  of  mind  as 
to  uphold  the  existence  of  true  volition  in  the  earliest  stages  of 
mental  development  ?  The  child  notably  lives  in  the  present, 
and  its  actions  are  direct  reactions  to  the  feelings  and  ideas  that 
are  excited  in  its  mind. 

(c)  But  as  the  will  cannot  originate  an  idea  or  a  train  of 
thought,  so  likewise  it  is  unable  sometimes  to  dismiss  one  when 
desirous  of  doing  so.  A  painful  idea  will,  as  every  one's  expe- 

cessively  ....  which  shows  they  have  a  motion  of  their  own  independent  of 
the  mind,  and  which  they  do  not  derive  from  its  action,  nor  will  lay  aside  upon 
its  command." — Tucker's  Light  of  Nature,  vol.  i.  p.  14. 


vn.l  VOLITION.  155 

rience  must  have  taught  him,  return  again  and  again  into  con- 
sciousness notwithstanding  every  effort  of  the  will  to  get  rid  of  it, 
just  as  a  movement  may  take  place  in  spite  of  the  will  The 
command  which  a  man  has  over  his  thoughts  is  very  different  at 
different  times,  and  one  man  may  be  able  to  dismiss  a  trouble- 
some reflection  when  another  cannot  for  the  life  of  him  do  so. 
"We  can  give  no  exact  reasons  for  these  variations  ;  the  causes  of 
them  lie  deeper  than  consciousness  can  reach  or  will  control.  So 
far,  then,  from  the  will  being  autocratic,  it  is  at  the  mercy  of  un- 
known conditions,  which  may  seriously  affect  at  any  moment  its 
power  or  energy.  Moreover,  when  an  unwelcome  idea  is  dis- 
missed from  the  mind,  it  is  not  done  by  a  simple  despotic  order 
of  the  will ;  but  by  fixing  attention  on  some  other  idea  which 
arises — by  maintaining  the  tension  of  it,  the  latter  is  made  con- 
sciousness ;  and  as  two  ideas  cannpt  exist  in  consciousness  at  the 
same  time,  or  at  any  rate  cannot  co-exist  in  equal  intensity,  that 
implies  the  dismissal  of  the  former  idea  into  the  background  and 
the  initiation  of  a  new  current  of  reflection — a  current  that  in 
such  case,  however,  is  not  uncommonly  interrupted  by  the  irrup- 
tion of  the  old  idea,  which  refuses  to  become  latent  or  dormant. 
Volitional  control  exercised  over  the  thoughts  manifestly  pre- 
supposes the  existence  of  many  ideas  in  the  mind,  and  the  possi- 
bility of  some  of  these  latent  ones  arising  to  influence  those  that 
may  be  active.  Denken  machtfrei.  "What  power  it  is  by  which 
one  idea  calls  up  another  we  do  not  know,  but  we  do  know  that 
it  is  not  by  the  will  , 

Locke  is  admitted  to  have  made  a  great  advance  in  psychology 
when  he -demonstrated  that  there  were  no  innate  ideas  in  the 
mind,  but  that  all  its  ideas  were  formed  by  observation  and 
reflection.  The  necessary  consequence  of  his  demonstration 
plainly  is,  what  the  foregoing  considerations  have  shown,  that 
there  is  no  inborn  will  in  the  human  mind.  It  would  be  a  very 
difficult  matter  to  fix  that  period  in  the  child's  mental  development 
when  volition  might  be  acknowledged  to  have  distinctly  mani- 
fested itself.  "Whence  and  when  the  first  volition  comes,  would 
indeed  be  perplexing  questions  if  the  will  vrere  admitted  to  be  a 
special  faculty  of  the  mind,  distinct  from  other  faculties,  of  con- 
stant quality,  and  never  falling  below  a  certain  level  of  energy. 
Why  is  it  that  we  are  powerless  to  fix  the  time  of  the  first 


156  VOLITION.  [CHAP. 

volition  ?  Because  the  will  is  not  one  and  constant,  but  infinitely 
variable  in  quantity  and  quality,  having  many  nervous  centres, 
and  not  having  any  existence  apart  from  the  concrete  act.  There 
are  in  reality  as  many  centres  of  volitional  reaction  in  the  brain 
as  there  are  centres  of  idea  ;  and  to  assume  one  constant  will  is 
a  part  of  that  metaphysical  system  of  making  abstractions  into 
entities  by  which  also  is  made  one  understanding,  one  reason,  and 
the  mind  is  mischievously  parcelled  out  into  faculties  that  have 
no  existence  in  nature.  It  is  utterly  at  variance  both  with  psy- 
chological analysis  of  the  nature  of  will,  and  with  physiological 
observation  of  the  constitution  of  the  supreme  nervous  centres,  to 
assume  a  single  nervous  centre  from  which  will  proceeds  ;  if  we 
must  make  a  definite  statement  on  so  obscure  a  matter,  it  is  that 
every  centre  of  idea  may  be  a  centre  of  voluntary  reaction.  For 
consider  this  :  although  we  describe  the  effect  as  ideomotor  when 
an  idea  reacts  directly  outwards,  yet  if  the  energy  of  the  idea  is 
not  instantly  so  expended,  but  persists  in  the  mind  for  a  moment, 
so  as  to  produce  a  clearer  consciousness  of  it,  before  passing 
outwards,  and  especially  if  there  is  some  feeling  or  desire  attend- 
ing it,  then  when  it  does  pass  outwards  we  commonly  describe 
the  effect  as  volitional.  As  consciousness  may,  however,  exist 
in  every  degree  of  intensity,  it  is  plain  that  we  cannot  definitely 
fix  a  stage  at  which  ideational  reaction  may  be  supposed  to 
become  volitional,  nor  determine  the  nature  of  the  change  which 
then  ensues.  -.  "  The  will  and  the  intelligence  are  one  and  the 
same  thing,"  is  the  corollary  of  Spinoza  from  his  close  reasoning. 
Let  us  imagine  the  first  appearing  idea  in  the  infant's  mind 
to  reach  outwards,  and  to  leave,  as  it  will  do,  a  residuum  in  its 
nervous  centre;  when  the  idea  occurs  again,  there  will  be  a 
tendency  to  a  similar  reaction.  Suppose,  however,  that  the  re- 
action causes  pain  to  the  child,  and  thereupon  a  second  idea  is 
formed  in  its  mind,  the  reaction  of  which  is  opposed  to  that  of 
the  first.  When  the*  first  idea  appears  again,  it  will,  instead  of 
reacting  outwards  at  once,  excite  the  second  idea  into  activity, 
which  is  inhibitory  or  preventive.  That  is  the  simplest  case 
of  volition :  the  child  has  voluntarily  refrained  from  doing 
something,  or  voluntarily  done  something  else ;  and  the  impulse 
that  has  prompted  the  choice  is  not  any  abstract  power,  but 
springs  from  that  fundamental  property  of  organic  element  by 


vii.]  FOLITION.  157 

which  what  is  agreeable  is  sought,  what  is  painful  is  shunned. 
Bear  in  mind,  when  weighing  volition,  that  there  is  often 
more  power  demanded  for  preventing  or  inhibiting  action  than 
for  producing  it.  As  ideas  multiply  in  the  mind,  and  groups  or 
series  of  ideas  are  associated,  of  course  the  process  becomes 
more  and  more  complicated ;  the  residua  of  volitions,  like  the 
residua  of  sensations  or  ideas,  remain  in  the  mind  and  render 
future  volitions  of  a  like  kind  more  easy  and  more  definite ; 
abstract  or  general  volitions,  as  it  were,  are  formed  as  the  repre- 
sentatives of  certain  trains  or  groups  of  ideas,  or  as  the  expres- 
sion of  their  due  co-ordinate  activity ;  and  by  their  persistence 
in  the  mind,  when  not  in  consciousness,  and  their  interaction 
there,  the  character  of  our  thought,  feeling,  and  action,  is 
modified  in  a  way  which  we  cannot  comprehend.  Every  one 
must  have  felt  that  an  act  which  was  at  first  disagreeable  and 
demanded  a  painful  effort  of  will,  may  become,  in  fact  invariably 
does  become,  after  several  repetitions,  much  less  disagreeable 
or  even  an  easy  habit.  Not  only,  however,  does  that  particular 
act  lose  its  painful  qualities,  but  all  acts  of  a  like  kind  are 
made  easier;  and  our  manner  of  feeling  with  regard  to  them, 
and  even  our  judgment  concerning  them,  are  greatly  modified. 
Though  we  can  give  no  explanation  of  the  way  in  which  we 
are  aided  by  the  traces  of  past  volitions,  it  is  plain  enough  that 
we  are  so  aided;  conscious  acquisition  becomes  unconscious 
power;  and  by  an  organic  assimilation  of  some  kind,  the  will 
even  becomes  in  certain  relations  automatic. 

Three  conclusions  are  then  to  be  distinctly  established  from 
the  foregoing  considerations  :  first,  that  the  will  is  not  an  innate 
and  constant  faculty,  but  a  gradual  and  varying  organization ; 
secondly,  that  wherever  an  afferent  nerve  passes  to  a  cell  or 
series  of  cells  in  the  cortical  layers  of  the  hemispheres,  and  an 
efferent  nerve  issues  from  the  cell  or  series  of  cells,  there  is  the 
possible  or  actual  centre  of  a  particular  volition;  and  thirdly, 
that  volition  or  will,  used  in  its  general  or  abstract  sense,  does 
not  denote  any  actual  entity,  but  simply  expresses  the  due  co- 
ordinate activity  of  the  supreme  centres  of  mental  force,  not 
otherwise  than  as  the  co-ordinate  activity  of  the  spinal  cord  or 
medulla  oblongata  might  be  said  to  represent  its  will — the 
faculty  in  both  cases  being  commonly  an  acquired  one  in  man. 


158  VOLITION.  [CHAP. 

When  the  animal  acts  in  answer  to  some  stimulus  with  direct 
and  definite  purpose,  or,  as  we  are  in  the  habit  of  saying,  in- 
stinctively, it  does  so  by  virtue  of  an  endowment  of  its  nervous 
centres,  which  is  original  in  it,  but  which  in  the  formation  of 
human  volition  is  being  gradually  acquired,  and  which,  if  we 
only  go  far  enough  back  through  generations,  may  sometimes 
be  seen  to  be  acquired  by  the  animals.  It  would  less  belie 
observation  to  place  an  ideal  entity  behind  the  innate  instinctive 
impulse  of  the  animal  than  behind  the  gradually  fashioned  will 
of  man. 

To  the  free  action  of  will  in  an  individual  two  conditions  are 
obviously  necessary  :  first,  an  unimpeded  association  of  ideas 
whereby  one  conception  may  readily  call  up  another,  and  com- 
plete deliberation  ensue ;  and  secondly,  a  strong  personality  or 
character  to  give  the  decision  between  conflicting  ideas  and 
desires.  We  shall  say  sometliing  of  the  second  condition  first. 

The  strong  or  -well-formed  character  which  a  well-fashioned 
will  implies,  is  the  result  of  a  good  training  applied  to  a  well- 
constituted  original  nature ;  and  the  character  is  not  directly 
determined  by  the  will,  but  in  any  particular  act  directly  deter- 
mines the  will.*  The  way  in  which  the  will  does  operate  upon 
the  character,  or  affect  the  ego,  is  indirectly  by  determining  the 
circumstances  which  subsequently  gradually  modify  it ;  we  may 
place  ourselves  voluntarily  in  certain  conditions  of  life,  but  all 
the  energy  of  the  strongest  will  cannot  then  prevent  some 
degree  of  modification  of  character  by  them — cannot  prevent  an 
equilibration  taking  place.  In  any  future  act  of  will  the 

*  Common  language,  Tucker  observes,  implies  two  wills  or  more,  opposing, 
impeding,  restraining,  and  mastering  one  another  ;  when  an  inordinate  passion 
interferes  with  the  prosecution  of  some  design,  we  still  regard  it  as  a  voluntary 
result,  because  sensible  of  the  instigation.  ' '  But  if  we  listen  to  the  common 
discourses  of  mankind,  we  shall  find  them  speaking  of  several  wills,  several 
agents,  in  the  same  person,  resisting,  counteracting,  overpowering,  and  control- 
ling one  another  ;  hence  the  so  usual  expressions  of  the  spiritual  and  carnal  wills, 
of  the  man  and  the  beast,  of  self-will  and  reason,  of  denying  our  wills,  subduing 
our  passions,  or  being  enslaved  by  them,  of  acting  unwillingly  or  against  the 
will,  and  the  like.  All  which  takes  rise  from  a  metonyme  of  the  cause  for  the 
effect ;  for  our  actions  being  constantly  determined  either  by  the  decisions  of  our 
judgment,  or  solicitations  of  our  desires,  we  mistake  them  for  the  will  itself ;  nor 
is  it  a  little  confirmation  of  the  will  being  actuated  by  motives,  to  find  them  so 
intimately  connected  therewith,  that  a  common  eye  cannot  distinguish  them 
apart." — Light  of  Nature,  i  547. 


viz.]  VOLITION.  ]59 

altered  character,  or  acquired  nature,  is  expressed;  and  while 
we,  perhaps,  all  unaware  of  any  change,  strenuously  uphold 
our  constancy,  a  looker-on  clearly  perceives  the  difference. 
"What  we  call  the  ego,  is  in  reality  an  abstraction  in  which  are 
contained  the  residua  of  all  former  feelings,  thoughts,  volitions, 
— a  combination  which  is  continually  becoming  more  and  more 
complex.  That  it  differs  at  different  times  of  life,  and  in  con- 
sequence of  different  external  relations,  those  who  would  most 
zealously  uphold  its  so-called  identity  do  unconsciously  admit 
when  they  acknowledge  that,  through  religious  influence  or 
otherwise,  any  one  may  be  made  "  quite  another  man,"  may  be 
"  converted,"  or  be  "  regenerate."  "When  the  ego  is  transformed  . 
in  correspondence  with  changed  external  circumstances,  the 
changes  are  so  gradual  as  to  be  imperceptible  at  the  time ;  but 
a  rapid  transformation  of  the  ego  may  sometimes  be  effected  by 
a  great  event,  internal  or  external,  as,  for  example,  when,  with 
the  development  of  puberty,  new  ideas  and  impulses  penetrate 
the  old  circle  and  become  constituent  parts  of  it,  producing  no 
little  subjective  disturbance  until  the  assimilation  is  completed 
and  an  equilibrium  established.  When  a  great  and  sudden 
revolution  in  the  ego  is  produced  by  an  external  cause,  it  is 
most  dangerous  to  the  mental  stability  of  the  individual,  and 
very  apt  to  become  pathological :  nothing  is  more  dangerous  to 
the  equilibrium  of  a  character  than  for  any  one  to  be  placed 
in  entirely  changed  external  circumstances  without  his  inner 
life  having  been  gradually  adapted  thereto ;  and  madness,  when 
its  origin  is  fairly  examined,  always  means  discord  between  the 
individual  and  his  circumstances.  He  who,  having  unexpectedly 
received  a  sudden  great  exaltation  in  life,  is  not  made  mad  by 
his  good  fortune,  cannot  realize  his  new  position  for  some  time, 
but  gradually  grows  to  it ;  he  who  from  some  subjective  cause 
believes  that  he  has  received  a  great  'exaltation  in  life  while 
external  circumstances  are  not  correspondent,  is  mad — the  trans- 
formation of  his  ego  being  pathological. 

The  history  of  a  man  is  the  true  revelation  of  his  character  : 
what  he  has  done  indicates  what  he  has  willed ;  what  he  has 
willed  marks  what  he  has  thought  and  felt  or  the  character  of 
his  deliberations ;  what  he  has  thought  and  felt  has  been  the 
result  of  his  nature  then  existing  as  the  developmental  product 


160  VOLITION.  [CHAP. 

of  a  certain  original  constitution  and  a  definite  life  experience. 
Objectively  considered,  the  identity  of  the  ego  is  neither  more 
nor  less  than  the  identity  of  the  full-grown  oak  with  the  first 
slight  shoot  from  the  acorn:  subjectively  considered,  the  strong 
and  sure  conception  which  every  one  has  of  the  ego,  is  not 
surprising,  inasmuch  as  it  is  the  most  frequently  active  idea, 
being  concerned  with  more  or  less  consciousness  in  every  event 
of  his  life,  being  that  to  which  every  action  has  fundamental 
reference.  The  fashioning  of  the  will  is  the  fashioning  of  the 
character ;  and  that  can  be  done  only  indirectly  by  fashioning 
the  circumstances  which  determine  the  manner  of  its  formation. 
But  however  formed,  it  is  the  character  which  determines  what  the 
judgment  shall  decide  to  be  most  eligible,  the  inclination  prompt 
as  most  desirable,  and  the  will  effect.  If  it  were  possible  for  anyone 
to  enter  thoroughly  into  the  inmost  character  of  another  person, 
and  to  become  exactly  acquainted  with  the  moving  springs  of 
his  conduct  in  his  particular  relations  of  life,  it  would  be  possible 
not  only  to  predict  his  line  of  action  on  every  occasion,  but  even 
to  work  him,  free  will  notwithstanding,  like  an  automaton,  by 
playing  on  his  predominant  passion,  interest,  or  principle. 

Secondly,  there  is  manifestly  required  for  the  free  action  of 
the  will  an  unimpeded  [association  of  ideas,  so  that  the  due 
materials  for  the  formation  of  a  proper  judgment  may  be  avail- 
able. But  the  ease,  completeness,  and  character  of  such  asso- 
ciation depend,  as  already  shown,  on  the  condition  of  the 
nervous  element,  very  slight  disorders  of  Avhich  accordingly 
quickly  declare  themselves  in  a  deterioration  of  the  will.  As 
the  secondary  automatic  faculties  of  the  spinal  centres  soon 
suffer  from  any  disorder  of  nerve  element,  and  reveal  their 
suffering  in  the  loss  of  co-ordinate  power  over  the  movements, 
so  in  the  loss  of  co-ordinating  power  over  the  ideas  and  feelings, 
in  their  irregular  and '  independent  reactions,  is  revealed  the 
deterioration  of  the  will.  And  as,  when  the  disorder  of  the 
spinal  centres  is  still  greater,  all  co-ordination  is  lost  and  con- 
vulsion sensue  ;  so  in  the  supreme  ganglionic  cells  of  the  hemi- 
spheres, when  the  disturbance  is  great,  there  is  no  co-ordination 
of  the  thoughts  and  feelings,  convulsive  reactions  of  the  cells 
take  place,  and  the  individual  is  a  raving  lunatic,  or  a  danger- 
ous one  dominated  by  a  few  persistent  morbid  ideas.  Volition 


vn.]  VOLITION.  |61 

is,  as  it  were,  resolved  into  the  inferior  constituents,  out  of 
which  it  is  in  the  due  course  of  things  compounded,  as  a  ray 
of  white  light  may  be  decomposed  into  several  coloured  rays  ; 
and  in  place  of.  the  definite,  calm,  co-ordinate  activity  of  well- 
formed  will,  there  is  the  aimless,  irregular,  explosive  display 
of  inferior  activity.  It  is  obvious,  however,  that  even  in  the 
sound  mind  the  quantity  and  quality  of  the  volition  depend 
upon  the  fulness  of  the  reflection,  and  that  any  hindrance  to 
the  due  association  of  ideas  will  pro  tanto  affect  the  will :  if 
the  particular  volition  were  to  be  resolved  by  a  retrograde 
metamorphosis  into  its  component  elements,  there  would  be  an 
explication  or  unfolding  of  all  the  ideas  and  desires  which  had 
gone  to  form  it ;  and,  going  still  further  back  in  the  analysis, 
there  would  be  a  revelation  even  of  those  particular  relations 
in  life  which  the  individual's  definite  organization  of  ideas,  the 
character  of  his  ego,  implies. 

It  will  be  proper,  before  finishing  with  the  consideration  of 
the  will,  to  say  something  of  the  relations  of  the  emotions  to  it. 
Independently  reacting,  as  an  emotional  idea  tends  to  do,  it  so 
far  weakens  the  will;  duly  controlled  and  co-ordinated,  as  is 
the  case  after  a  just  mental  cultivation,  it  strengthens  the  will. 
Before  many  ideas  have  been  acquired,  and  their  multitudinous 
associations  fixed,  as  in  the  young  child  ;  or  where  the  state  of 
the  development  of  the  brain  precludes  intellectual  development, 
as  in  the  idiot  and  in  the  animal, — the  emotions  excited  imme- 
diately expend  their  energy  in  outward  manifestation  ;  and  when 
in  the  cultivated  adult  there  exists,  from  some  cause,  an  unstable 
condition  of  nervous  element,  or  when  the  tension  of  the  emotion 
or  passion  is  exceedingly  great,  it  will  also  react  directly  outward 
in  spite  of  the  will :  the  law,  admitting  this,  would  count  it 
therefore  no  great  crime  for  a  husband  to'have  slain  a  man  whom 
he  had  surprised  in  the  act  of  adultery  with  his  wife.  But 
whosoever  takes  careful  note  of  his  own  mental  states  may  call 
to  mind  occasions  on  which  an  emotion  suddenly  excited  strongly 
prompted  a  particular  action,  which  he  nevertheless  withstood 
for  an  instant,  and  might,  if  necessary,  have  restrained  altogether; 
but  perceiving,  with  quick  intuition,  that  he  might  do  well  to 
manifest  the  emotion,  he  afterwards  allowed  the  action  to  take 
place.  The  looker-on,  perhaps,  sees  only  an  impulse  and  rash- 
12 


162  VOLITION.  [CHAP. 

ness  ;  and  yet  the  rashness  was  in  some  sort  deliberate — an 
indiscretion  which  served  the  end  when  wiser  plots  might  have 
failed.  Emotion  was  the  real  motive  force,  but  an  emotion  acting 
under  the  direction  of  reason,  and,  therefore,  in  accordance  with 
prudent  insight  into  the  external  relations.  The  individual  might 
have  done  the  same  action  in  obedience  to  a  calm  resolution  of 
the  will,  and  better  so,  perhaps,  if  he  had  been  operating  upon 
inanimate  objects ;  but  in  dealing  with  men  it  may  sometimes 
be  that  a  prudent  exhibition  of  feeling  much  aids  the  success  of 
the  ends  designed.  Only  let  a  man  beware  that,  however  he 
imposes  upon  others,  he  does  not  deceive  himself  by  his  passion, 
allowing  it  to  obscure  his  reason  and  pervert  his  judgment: 
restrained  within  the  supreme  centres,  it  is  apt  to  do  that  in  all 
minds,  and  sure  to  do  so  in  weak  minds  ;  but,  duly  subordinated 
and  co-ordinated  in  reflection,  it  adds  force  to  resolution.  Be- 
strained  passion,  acting  under  the  calm  control  of  reason,  is 
verily  a  most  potent  force  ;  it  gives  a  white  heat,  as  it  were,  to 
the  expression  of  thought,  an  intensity  to  the  will. 

An  emotional  person  certainly  often  produces  great  effects  in 
the  world,  and  especially  such  effects  as  are  destructive  of  some 
existing  system  or  belief;  it  is,  indeed,  their  great  self-feeling 
commonly  that  gives  to  the  reformers  their  abandonment, 
energy,  and  consequent  success.  But  an  evil,  often  outweighing 
these  advantages,  is  that  there  is  no  guarantee  that  they  are 
right ;  for,  necessarily  one-sided,  they  see  but  a  part  of  a  truth. 
It  is  certain  that  a  great  principle  has  often  suffered  seriously 
from  the  hasty,  violent,  and  ill-considered  action  of  its  sincere 
and  earnest  advocates :  adverse  events  or  circumstances,  which 
they  in  their  passion  could  not  recognise,  but  which,  as  rational 
beings,  it  behoved  them  to  have  recognised,  have  swept  them 
away,  and  the  truth  which  they  have  been  upholding  has  been 
for  a  while  the  victim  of  their  indiscretion.  As  in  the  mental 
phenomena  of  the  individual  the  power  of  reflection  is  often 
best  exhibited  in  the  prevention  of  action  prompted  by  feeling — 
in  an  inhibitory  function,  so  amongst  men  in  the  social  state 
the  power  of  a  good  understanding  is  sometimes  best  manifest  in 
not  pressing  an  immature  reform.  But  it  is  a  very  hard  matter 
for  a  reformer  who  feels  strongly  to  perceive  that  what  is  theo- 
retically desirable  and  right  may  also  practically  be  undesirable 


vii.]  VOLITION.  163 

and  wrong  under  existing  social  conditions ;  he  is  apt  to  treat 
adverse  circumstances  as  if  they  were  accidents  or  anomalies 
iu  nature,  having  no  right  of  existence,  and  thus  more  or  less 
wilfully  shuts  his  eyes  to  the  force  of  events  on  which  he 
proposes  to  operate,  and  which  will,  in  any  case,  operate  upon 
his  principle.  He  hurls  a  favourite  principle,  which  may  be  a 
very  just  one,  into  the  world  not  sufficiently  prepared  for  it, 
which  has  not  reached  the  due  level  of  its  evolution,  and  which, 
therefore,  is  necessarily  hostile  to  it ;  and  if  his  truth  is  oppressed 
and  seemingly  extinguished  by  the  opposition  which  it  meets 
with,  then  he  is  disheartened  and  complains,  or  is  angry  and 
rails  :  he  is  like  the  boy  sending  his  paper  boat  on  the  lake 
whose  waters  are  lashed  by  a  storm.  However,  it  is  not  nature 
which  is  wrong,  if  there  is  any  wrong,  but  himself — the  reformer. 
The  fact  that  he  did  not  succeed  proves  that  he  did  not  deserve  to 
succeed ;  he  has  not  rightly  estimated  the  character  and  force  of 
circumstances  which  have  been  too  strong  for  his  truth,  and  by  a 
simple  law  of  nature  have,  for  a  time  at  least,  quenched  its  light. 
A  great  advance  can  never  be  superimposed  upon  a  people  miracu- 
lously ;  in  order  to  be  permanent  it  must  be  a  natural  evolution 
from  pre-existing  events — must  grow  out  of  them ;  that  which 
most  effectually  demolishes  an  old  error  is  not  a  passionate  attack 
upon  it  by  the  intensely  feeling  reformer,  but  a  new  and  better 
creation,  which  quietly  undermines  it  so  that  it  falls  without 
trouble.  Creation  is  a  far  higher  order  of  work  than  destruction  ; 
it  is  the  quiet,  self-contained  activity  of  definite  productive  aim — 
in  other  words,  of  will  in  its  highest  development — as  opposed  to 
the  explosive  and  dissipated  display  of  an  inferior  and  mostly 
destructive  emotional  force.  But  as  the  calm  intellectual  con- 
templation of  events,  viewing  all  the  relations  of  them,  is 
attended  with  no  great  spur  to  any  particular  activity,  but  marks 
an  equilibration  between  the  individual  and  his  environment, 
we  may  easily  understand  how  excellent  a  thing  to  put  the  will 
in  motion  is  some  feeling  or  desire  of  good  to  be  attained,  or  of  ill 
to  be  shunned,  in  order  to  establish  an  equilibration.  Then 
the  will,  enlightened  by  an  inadequate  reflection  upon  all  the 
co-operating  conditions,  is  able  to  act  with  a  calm,  steady, 
intelligent,  and  most  potent  energy. 

"Without  doubt  the  will  is  the  highest  force  in  nature,  the 


IQ4:  VOLITION.  [CIIAP. 

last  consummate  blossom  of  all  her  marvellous  efforts.  The 
natural  product  of  the  highest  and  completest  reflection,  it 
represents  the  exquisitely  and  subtly  adapted  reaction  of  man 
to  the  best  insight  into  the  relations  in  which  he  moves.  If  we 
reflect  upon  the  manner  in  which  the  actions  of  the  different 
nervous  centres  of  the  body  are  subordinated  and  co-ordinated  in 
its  manifestation, — how  there  are,  as  it  were,  a  gathering  together 
and  concentration  of  different  forces  into  one  definite  mode  of 
action,  a  unifying  of  their  energies, — we  may  be  able  to  form  a 
conception,  by  help  of  what  we  can  thus  observe,  of  the  mode  of 
that  exaltation  or  transpeciation  of  force  and  matter  throughout 
nature  which  we  cannot  follow  through  its  inmost  processes.* 

By  the  power  of  a  well-fashioned  will  man  reacts  with 
intelligent  success  upon  the  external  world,  brings  himself  into  a 
complete  harmony  with  his  surroundings,  assimilates  and  incor- 
porates nature,  and  thus  carries  forward  its  organic  evolution. 
The  highest  action  of  the  will  is  therefore  truly  creative,  for 
in  it  is  initiated  a  new  development  of  nature :  it  adumbrates 
the  possibilities,  of  mankind,  as  a  rudimentary  organ  in  a  lower 
species  of  animal  obscurely  foretells  the  higher  species  in  which 
it  will  have  full  development.  If  we  ask  whence  comes  the 
impulse  that  displays  itself  in  this  upward  nisus,  we  can  only 
answer  lamely  that  it  comes  from  the  same  unfathomable  source 
as  the  impulse  that  inspires  or  moves  organic  growth  throughout 
nature. 


NOTES. 

1  (p.  147). — "  Sixthly,  the  -will  appears  to  be  nothing  but  a  desire  or 
aversion  sufficiently  strong  to  produce  an  action  that  is  not  automatic 
primarily  or  secondarily.  At  least  it  appears  to  me  that  the  substitu- 
tion of  these  words  for  the  word  will  may  be  justified  by  the  common 
use  of  language.  The  "will  is,  therefore,  that  desire  or  aversion  which 
is  strongest  for  the  present  time.  Since,  therefore,  all  love  and  hatred, 
all  desire  and  aversion,  are  factitious  and  generated  by  association,  i.e. 
mechanically,  it  follows  that  the  will  is  mechanical  also." — Hartley's 
Theory  of  the  Human  Mind,  p.  205. 

*  Transpeciation  is  a  word  used  by  Sir  Thomas  Brown  which  might  be  found 
useful  at  the  present  day. 


viz.]  VOLITION.  165 

"  Appetite,  therefore,  and  aversion,  are  simply  so  called  as  long  as 
they  follow  not  deliberation.  But  if  deliberation  have  gone  before, 
then  the  last  act  of  it,  if  it  be  appetite,  is  called  will ;  if  aversion, 

unwillingness Neither  is  the  freedom  of  "willing  or  not 

willing  greater  in  man  than  in  other  living  creatures.  For  where 
there  is  appetite  the  entire  cause  of  appetite  hath  preceded  ;  •  and, 
consequently,  the  act  of  appetite  could  not  choose  but  follow  :  that  is, 
hath  of  necessity  followed.  And,  therefore,  such  a  liberty  as  is  free 
from  necessity  is  not  to  be  found  either  in  the  will  of  men  or  of 
beasts.  But  if  by  liberty  we  understand  the  faculty  or  power,  not  of 
willing,  but  of  doing  what  they  will,  then  certainly  that  liberty  is  to 
be  allowed  to  both,  and  both  may  equally  have  it,  whensoever  it  is  to 
be  had." — Hobbes,  vol.  i.  p.  409. 

"The  whole  sum  of  desires,  aversions,  hopes,  and  fears,  continued 
till  the  thing  be  either  done  or  thought  impossible,  is  that  we  call 
Deliberation ." — Leviathan,  vii. 

2  (p.  153). — I  extract  the  following  remarks  of  Hume  : — 

1.  "But  do  we  pretend  to  be  acquainted  with  the  nature  of  the 
human  soul,  and  the  nature  of  the  idea,  or  the  aptitude  of  one  to  pro- 
duce the  other  1  .  .  .  .  We  only  feel  the  event,  namely,  the  existence 
of  an  idea,  consequent  to  a  command  of  the  will.     But  the  manner  in 
which  this  operation  is  performed,  the  power  by  which  it  is  produced, 
is  entirely  beyond  our  comprehension." 

2.  "  The  command  of  the  mind  over  itself  is  limited  as  well  as  its 
command  over  the  body ;  and  these  limits  are  not  known  by  reason. 

Will  any  one  pretend  to  assign  the  ultimate  reason  of  these 

boundaries,  or  show  why  the  power  is  deficient  in  one  case,  not  in 
another  1 " 

3.  "  Self-command  is  very  different  at  different  times Can  we 

give  any  reason  for  these  variations,  except  experience  ?     Is  there  not 
here,  either  in  a  spiritual  or  material  substance,  or  both,  some  secret 
mechanism  or  structure  of  parts,  upon  which  the  effect  depends,  and 
which,  being  entirely  unknown  to  us,  renders  the  power  or  energy  of 
the  will  equally  unknown  and  incomprehensible  ?  " 

4.  "  The  motion  of  our  body  follows  upon  the  command  of  our 
will.     Of  this  we  are  every  moment  conscious.     But  the  means  by 
which  this  is  effected,  the   energy  by  which  the  will  performs  so 
extraordinary  an  operation ;  of  this  we  are  so  far  from  being  imme- 
diately conscious,  that  it  must  for  ever  escape   our  most  diligent 
inquiry." 

After  explaining  that  volition  does  not  act  directly  on  a  limb  itself, 


1(56  VOLITION.  [CH4P.  vi. 

but  through  certain  muscles  and  nerves,  through  \vhich  the  motion  is 
successively  propagated,  he  asks — "  Can  there  be  a  more  certain  proof 
that  the  power  by  which  this  whole  operation  is  performed,  so  far 
from  being  directly  and  fully  known  by  an  inward  sentiment  or  con- 
sciousness, is  to  the  last  degree  mysterious  and  unintelligible.  Here 
the  mind  wills  a  certain  event ;  immediately  another  event  unknown 
to  ourselves,  and  totally  different  from  the  intended,  is  produced. 
This  event  produces  another  equally  unknown ;  till,  at  last,  through  a 
long  succession,  the  desired  event  is  produced." — Inquiry  concer/iiny 
the  Human  Understanding. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

MOTOR  NERFOUS  CENTRES  OR  MOTORIUM  COMMUNE,  AND 
ACTUATION  OR  EFFECT10N. 


far  we  have  been  engaged  in  considering  the  formation 
of  the  so-called  mental  faculties   by  the  organization  of 
residua,  as  this  takes  place  in  the  production  of  simple  or  pre- 
sentative  ideas  out  of  sensory  impressions,  that  is,  in  apprehen- 
sion ;  in  the  production  of  representative  ideas  or  conceptions  by 
abstraction  from  the  simple  ideas,  that  is,  in  comprehension; 
and  in  the  production  of  volition  as  the  result  of  the  complex 
interworking  of  conceptions.     But  it  is  not  man's  function  in  life 
merely  to  think  ;  his  inner  life  he  must  express  or  utter  in  action 
of  some  kind.    Consequently  there  are  other  residua  besides  those 
already  dealt  with,  which  enter  as  constituents  into  his  mental 
life  —  the  residua,  namely,  that  are  left  behind  by  movements  or 
actions.    The  movements  that  are  instigated  or  actuated  by  a  par- 
ticular nervous  centre  do,  like  the  idea,  leave  behind  their  residua, 
which,  after  several  repetitions,  become  so  completely  organized 
into  the  nature  of  the  nervous  centre  that  the  movements  may 
henceforth  be  automatic.     There  is  then,  intervening  between  the 
volitional  impulse  and  the  action,  a  department  or  repositoiy  of 
motor  residua,  in  which  exist  the  immediate  agents  of  movements 
—  a  region,  psychologically  speaking,  of  abstract,  latent,  or  potential 
movements.    If  recourse  be  had  to  physiology,  it  is  found  that, 
conformably  with  what  psychological  analysis  teaches,  there  are 
numerous  special  motorial  nervous  centres,  or  nuclei  of  ganglionic 
cells,  from  which  motor  nerves  proceed,  and  by  the  experimental 
irritation  of  which  movements  may  be  artificially  excited. 


168  MOTOR  NER70US  CENTRES,  [CHAP. 

This  region  of  motor  residua,  or,  if  we  might  venture  so  to  call 
it,  this  motorium  commune,  is  related  to  conception  on  the  reactive 
side  of  human  life,  as  sensation  is  on  the  receptive  side.  As  the 
residua  of  sensorial  activity  are,  as  already  seen,  necessary  to  a 
definite  representative  conception,  so  do  the  residua  of  motorial 
activity  in  their  turn  enter  into  conception,  and  are  indispensable 
to  its  realization  in  action.  It  may  not  be  amiss,  then,  to  take 
notice  here,  again,  how  the  highest  mental  action  comprehends 
or  contains  the  whole  bodily  life.  The  sensory  life  enters  essen- 
tially into  conception ;  the  organic  life,  as  previously  set  forth, 
participates  in  the  emotional  quality  of  it ;  and  the  motorial 
activity  of  the  body  is  essential  to  its  due  effectuation.  How 
mischievously  unjust,  then,  is  the  absolute  barrier  set  up  between 
mind  and  body  !  How  misleading  the  parcelling  out  of  the 
mind  into  separate  faculties  that  answer  to  nothing  jn  nature  ! 

What  name  may  most  properly  be  given  to  this  neglected  but 
important  motorial  region  of  our  mental  life  ?  The  motor  residua 
that  mingle  in  our  conceptions  have  been  called,  in  Germany, 
motor  intuitions  (Bewegungs-anschauungen) ;  but  this  description, 
though  admirably  expressing  their  intervention  in  conception,  is 
perhaps  too  psychological  to  convey  adequately  an  idea  of  their 
physiological  importance  as  the  immediate  agents  or  faculties  of 
all  movements.  The  motor  intuition,  furthermore,  intervenes 
not  only  between  conception  and  respondent  action,  but  also 
between  sensation  and  the  motor  reaction  thereto,  and  even  be- 
tween the  stimulus  and  the  resultant  reflex  action ;  so  that  the 
term  intuition  is  not  altogether  suitable,  and  may  perhaps  pro- 
duce confusion.  More  appropriately  might  this  region  of  motor 
residua  be  described  generically  as  the  region  of  actuation,  con- 
taining the  powers  or  faculties  through  which  the  nervous  centres, 
excited  into  activity,  act  upon  the  muscular  system,  and,  by  thus 
uttering  or  expressing  their  energies,  restore  the  equilibrium. 
It  contains  the  means  by  which  will,  idea,  or  sensation  actuates 
definite  movements,  or  prevents  their  occurrence.  To  describe  it 
as  the  locomotive  faculty  would  bring  us  to  the  inconsistency  of 
calling  that  locomotive  the  aim  of  which  was  often  inhibitory 
or  preventive  of  motion,  and  would  scarcely  include  the  organic 
reflex  movements. 

However  it  be  named,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  such  a  region 


viii.]  OR  MOTORIUM  COMMUNE.  \Qg 

of  mental  activity  exists,  and  that  in  it  are  contained,  predeter- 
mined and  co-ordinated,  the  faculties  of  different  groups  and 
series  of  movements.  It  is  evident,  then,  why  the  will  can  only 
determine  the  result; — cannot  determine  the  action  of  a  particular 
muscle,  or  the  combined  actions  of  certain  muscles  which  have 
not  acted  together  before.  All  it  can  do  is  to  will  the  event,  and 
thereupon  the  proper  nerve-fibres  and  muscles  are  put  in  action 
through  the  medium  of  the  motor  intuition.  If  the  result  wished 
is  a  new,  unfamiliar  one,  no  residue  thereof  from  previous 
experiences  existing  in  the  motor  centres,  then  the  will  is 
unequal  to  the  accomplishment  of  it ;  there  is  not  an  exact  and 
definite  idea  of  the  end  to  be  effected,  the  necessary  motor  in- 
tuition being  wanting.  After  repeated  trials,  the  desired  skill 
is  firmly  acquired,  and  the  movement  is  henceforth  automatic, 
the  motor  intuition  having  been  gradually  organized  in  the 
proper  nervous  centres  :  the  result  strictly  corresponds  with  that 
which  in  other  nervous  centres  we  describe  as  abstract  idea. 
Here  again  we  are  taught  that  the  design  manifest  in  any  act  of 
will  is  due  to  similar  organic  processes  to  those  which  build  up 
the  design  in  the  nervous  centres  of  sensori-motor  action  and  of 
reflex  action,  and  may  perceive  that  it  is  only  because  of  its  being 
attended  with  consciousness  that  we  describe  the  energy  of  one  of 
these  definitely  organized  residua  in  the  highest  centre  as  a 
conception  or  notion  of  the  result — speaking  psychologically 
rather  than  physiologically. 

In  the  animals  the  motor  intuitions  are,  like  their  other  faculties, 
mostly  innate.  There  are  no  distinct,  clear  conceptions  accom- 
panying their  instinctive  actions ;  but  obscure  sensations  and 
feelings  excite  the  motor  intuitions,  which  then  determine  the 
action  of  the  proper  muscles.  In  man,  on  the  other  hand,  although 
the  faculties  of  certain  co-ordinate  movements  do  exist,  preformed 
in  the  nervous  centres,  the  motor  intuitions  are  mostly  acquired  ; 
in  this  regard  corresponding  with  the  formation  of  his  other 
mental  faculties.  Our  ideas  of  distance,  size,  and  solidity  furnish 
striking  examples  of  the  manner  in  which  we  are  indebted  to 
our  muscular  intuitions,  and  of  the  difference  in  respect  of  them 
between  us  and  the  animals.  The  young  swallow's  intuition  of 
distance  appears  to  be  as  perfect  when  it  begins  to  fly  as  it  is  after 
a  life-experience  ;  but  it  is  not  so  with  the  young  child,  which 


170  MOTOR  Nmrous  CENTRES,  [CHAP. 

cannot  for  some  time  tell  how  far  off  or  how  near  an  object  is  to  it. 
In  the  first  instance,  the"  child's  body  moves  with  the  eyes,  when 
these  are  fixed  upon  a  light  that  is  moved  about.  After  a  few 
weeks  the  moving  light  is  followed  by  a  motion  of  the  head  only ; 
next  the  eye-ball  itself  is  turned  also ;  and  ultimately  objects 
are  followed  with  the  eye  without  any  motion  of  the  head.  As 
this  is  going  on,  there  is  acquired  gradually  a  recognition  of  the 
distance  of  an  object,  and  the  convergence  of  the  axes  of  the 
eyes  is  seen  to  change  regularly  and  quickly  with  the  distance 
of  the  object.  Now  it  is  well  known  that  the  accommodation  of 
the  eyes  to  distance  takes  place  through  a  convergence  of  their 
.axes  and  an  accommodation  of  their  lenses,  two  actions  which 
are  from  the  first  very  firmly  associated  ;  so  much  so  that  a  con- 
genital defect  in  the  lense  is  now  recognised  to  be  the  frequent 
cause  of  squinting  in  children.  But  these  accommodating  move- 
ments are  not  determined  by  any  act  of  will,  nor  are  they  within 
consciousness ;  they  are  consensual  movements  in  respondence 
to  the  visual  sensation,  and  strictly  comparable  with  the  in- 
stinctive movements  of  the  animals.  It  is  not  the  visual  sensa- 
tion directly  which  gives  us  the  idea  or  intuition  of  distance,  but 
the  motor  intuition  of  the  accommodating  movement  which, 
though  uncertain  and  confused  at  first  in  man,  soon  gets  precision 
and  distinctness^1)  In  this  example  we  have  a  type  of  that 
which  happens,  with  greater  or  less  rapidity,  in  the  case  of  every 
movement  in  the  body.  The  infant  at  first  kicks  out  his  leg — 
whether  from  a  so-called  spontaneous  outburst  of  energy,  or  by 
reason  of  some  organic  or  external  stimulus,  matters  not — and 
bringing  it  in  contact  with  some  external  object,  gets  thereby  a 
sensation,  in  respondence  to  which,  as  in  the  consensual  accom- 
modation of  the  eyes,  adaptations  of  movements  take  place,  and 
muscular  intuitions  are  more  or  less  quickly  and  completely 
organized.  The  residua  of  the  muscular  movements,  or  the 
muscular  intuitions,  are  henceforth  essential  constituents  of  our 
mental  life,  whether  we  are  distinctly  conscious  of  them  or  not. 
Consider,  if  further  illustration  be  needed,  the  gradual  acquisition 
of  the  complex  movements  of  speech,  and  the  intimate  connexion 
which  they  have  with  the  formation  of  our  conceptions.  A  weak- 
minded  person,  or  a.  person  of  low  cultivation,  often  cannot  con- 
tent himself  with  the  mental  representation  of  a  word,  or  clearly 


VIII0  07?  MOTORIUM  COIWUXE.  jjj 

comprehend  a  question  put  to  him,  but  must  bring  the  actual 
movement  to  his  assistance,  and  utter  the  word  or  repeat  the 
question  aloud,  in  order  to  get  his  conception  ;  and  the  essential 
importance  of  the  articulating  movements  in  conceptions  is 
attested  by  the  frequent  deficiency  of  them  in  idiots.  It  is  most 
necessary,  however,  to  guard  against  the  strong  inclination  which 
there  certainly  is  to  look  upon  certain  movements,  those  of  the 
eye  and  the  tongue,  as  having  a  specially  jntimate  connexion 
with  the  mental  life  which  other  movements  of  the  body  have 
not.  Unwarrantably  separating  by  an  absolute  barrier  the  mind 
from  the  body,  and  then  locating  it  in  a  particular  corner  of  the 
latter,  as  is  commonly  done,  we  are  prone  to  forget  that  in  mental 
action  the  whole  bodily  life  is  comprehended— that  every  mus- 
cular intuition,  therefore,  has  its  due  place  and  influence  in  our 
mental  life.(2) 

Another  consideration  which  it  is  necessary  to  bear  well  in 
mind  is,  that  there  is  no  fundamental  difference  in  organic 
nature  between  those  motor  intuitions  that  are  original,  or  pri- 
marily automatic,  and  those  which  are  acquired  in  the  natural 
order  of  development,  or  are  secondarily  automatic.  Between  the 
stimulus  and  the  definite  reflex  action,  whether  innate  or  ac- 
quired, between  the  sensation  and  its  assemblage  or  succession 
of  muscular  movements,  the  definite  motor  intuitions  intervene 
as  necessarily  as  between  the  conscious  conception  and  the 
answering  movement ;  though  in  the  latter  case  only  have  we  the 
consciousness  of  effort  or  motive  energy.  That  the  former  may 
take  place  without  consciousness,  proves  that  the  motor  residua 
have  been  definitely  and  adequately  organized  in  the  proper  motor 
centres  ;  so  that  so  far  from  design  implying  consciousness,  as 
metaphysical  psychologists  have  thought,  consciousness  altogether 
vanishes  when  the  design  is  firmly  fixed  in  the  nature  of  the 
nervous  element.  Consider  only  the  manifold  co-existent  and 
successive  movements  of  the  many  muscles  of  the  tongue,  the 
palate,  the  pharynx,  and  the  jaws,  in  mastication  and  deglutition 
— complex  movements  which  the  will  could  never  effect,  of  which 
we  have  little  or  no  consciousness,  and  before  which  human 
ingenuity  is  mute — and  it  will  be  abundantly  evident  how  much 
we  depend  in  our  active  life  upon  the  region  of  motor  intuitions. 
But  let  it  not  be  overlooked,  let  it,  indeed,  be  prominently  held 


172  MOTOR  NER70US  CENTRES,  [CHAP. 

in  remembrance,  that  these  external  motor  manifestations  only 
represent  what  is  contained  internally  in  the  appropriate  nervous 
centres ;  that  what  is  outwardly  displayed  exists  in  the  inner- 
most ;  that  every  motor  intuition  is,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
an  essential  part  of  the  mental  life. 

The  foregoing  observations  are  greatly  strengthened  by  certain 
morbid  phenomena,  in  which  a  variation  of  the  circumstances 
furnishes  an  excellent  test  of  the  principles  enunciated.  In  the 
course  of  his  investigations  into  what  he  called  "  hypnotism," 
Mr.  Braid  found  that  if  the  face  or  limbs  of  his  patients  were 
placed  in  an  attitude  which  was  the  normal  expression  of  a 
certain  emotion,  thereupon  that  emotion  was  actually  excited ; 
the  motor  intuition  immediately  awakening  the  appropriate  con- 
ception. This  is  in  accordance  with  what  we  frequently  observe 
in  watching  the  genesis  of  mind  in  young  children,  where  it  is 
plain  that  an  attitude  or  gesture,  unconsciously  or  involuntarily 
produced,  sometimes  awakens  in  the  mind  the  correlative  idea 
or  emotion,  and  where,  on  the  other  hand,  every  thought  is 
immediately  translated  into  some  movement. 

But  the  influence  of  the  motor  department  of  mental  action, 
the  region  of  actuation,  will  receive  far  stronger  illustration  from 
the  phenomena  of  insanity  and  of  certain  convulsive  diseases. 
It  scarcely  admits  of  question  that  some  of  the  delusions  of  the 
insane  have  their  origin  in  what  may  justly  be  called  muscular 
hallucinations  :  a  disorder  of  the  nervous  centres  of  the  muscular 
intuitions  generates  in  consciousness  a  false  conception,  or  delu- 
sion, as  to  the  condition  of  the  muscles,  so  that  an  individual 
lying  in  his  bed  believes  himself  to  be  flying  through  the  air, 
or  imagines  his  legs,  arms,  or  head  to  be  separated  from  his 
body,  just  as  he  gets  hallucinations  of  sense  when  the  sensorial 
centres  are  disordered.  (3)  In  dreams  we  may  sometimes  ob- 
serve the  same  kind  of  thing,  as  when  from  hindered  respiratory 
movements  a  person  suddenly  wakes  up  with  the  idea  that  he  is 
falling  over  a  precipice.  Such  muscular  illusions,  or  hallucina- 
tions, can  of  course  only  ensue  when  the  reaction  of  the  disordered 
motor  intuition  is  into  consciousness  ;  if,  as  may  happen,  and 
commonly  does  happen,  the  reaction  takes  place  outwards,  there 
are  irregular  or  convulsive  movements,  but  no  delusion  is 
generated. 


OR  MOTOBIUM  COMMUNE.  173 

The  phenomena  of  convulsions,  properly  examined,  will  serve 
to  exhibit  the  independent  nature  of  the  motor  intuitions.   Every 
kind  of  movement  which  may  be  normally  excited  by  the  will 
may  occur  as  a  convulsive  act,  when,  of  course,  there  is  no 
question  of  the  exercise  of  will,  and  when  there  is  often  an 
entire  absence  of  consciousness.  (4)     As  the  individual  in  sound 
health  must  give  intense  attention  in  order  to  isolate  a  certain 
muscular  movement  which  usually  takes  place  as  a  part  of  a 
complex  series,  and  then  cannot  always  succeed,  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  in  spasmodic  or  convulsive  muscular  action  there 
should  often  be  more  or  less  co-ordination  of  movements ;  the 
design  in  the  centres  of  motor  intuitions  not  being  entirely 
abolished.     In   cases    of   cerebral    haemorrhage,   it  sometimes 
happens  that  the  articulating  movements  of  single  pounds,  or  of 
a  certain  series  of  sounds,  syllables,  or  words,  are  produced  with- 
out any  mental  act,  or  even  against  the  will,  of  the  patient. 
Consciousness  is    not    always    entirely  abolished ;    and    then 
patients  are  able  to  give  an  account  of  the  impulse  which  insti- 
gates the  movements,  and  which  they  are  unable  successfully  to 
resist.     It  is  well  known  that  the  idea  of  convulsions,  whether 
excited  by  present  perception  or  by  memory,  may  express  itself 
in  convulsive  movements — movements  that,  nevertheless,  often 
display  a  considerable  amount  of  co-ordination.     It  is  evident 
enough  how,  in  a  healthy  person,  swallowing,  coughing,  and 
yawning  are  excited  by  the  observation  of  these  acts  in  another ; 
and  as  instances  of  similarly  produced  morbid  actions,  Bornberg 
adduces  those  dancing  epidemics  of  the  Middle  Ages,  in  which 
co-ordinate  spasmodic  movements  were-  notoriously  excited  in 
delicate  women  to  an   extent   and  for   a  period  such  as  the 
strongest  man  could  not  have  endured  in  health.     It  behoves 
us  to  keep  in  mind  that  as  so  many  of  our  co-ordinate  actions 
are  automatically  done  in  health,  so  there  may  be  considerable 
co-ordinate  automatic  action  in  disease. 

There  yet  remains  further  important  considerations.  Let  a 
man  have  the  will  to  command  or  effect  a  certain  movement, 
and  a  notion  of  the  result  desired,  without  any  paralysis  of 
motor  power,  and  he  may  still  be  impotent  to  perform  the  move- 
ment. And  why  ?  Because  there  may  be  a  paralysis  of  sensi- 
bility in  the  muscles,  by  reason  of  which  he  has  no  means  of 


174  MOTOR  NERFOUS  CENTRES,  [CHAP. 

knowing  what  is  the  condition  of  the  muscles  of  the  part,  the 
instruments  which  he  is  to  use — cannot  tell  whether  they  are 
acting  or  not ;  he  lacks  that  information  which  the  muscular 
sense  should  rightly  afford  him.  In  order  that  the  will  may 
actuate  a  movement,  there  are  necessary,  then,  not  only  a  con- 
ception of  the  end  desired,  and  a  motor  intuition  of  the  muscular 
movements  subserving  that  end,  but  also  a  sense  of  the  action  of 
the  muscles.  Any  psychological  arguments  as  to  the  value  of 
this  guiding  muscular  feeling  are  rendered  needless  by  patho- 
logical experience,  which  plainly  proves  that,  when  the  muscular 
sense  is  paralysed,  the  movements  cannot  be  performed  except 
some  other  sense  come  to  the  rescue.  The  sense  of  sight  usually 
does  this  :  a  woman,  whom  Sir  Charles  Bell  saw,  who  had  lost 
the  muscular  sense  in  her  arm,  could  nevertheless  hold  her  child 
when  she  kept  her  eyes  upon  it ;  but  the  moment  she  turned 
her  eyes  away  she  dropped  the  child.  I  have  seen  a  similar 
instance  recently  of  a  woman,  epileptic  in  consequence  of 
syphilis,  who  had  lost  the  muscular  sense  in  her  left  arm,  and 
who  did  not  know,  except  she  looked  at  the  limb,  whether  she 
had  got  hold  of  anything  with  her  hand  or  not ;  if  she  grasped 
a  jug,  she  could  hold  it  quite  well  as  long  as  she  looked  at  it, 
but  if  she  looked  away  then  she  dropped  it  :  she  had  no  loss  of 
tactile  sensation.  In  such  morbid  states  the  difference  between 
tactile  sensation  and  the  muscular  sense  is  well  marked.  '•'  Olli- 
vier  details  a  case  in  which  the  patient  had  lost  the  cutaneous 
sense  of  touch  throughout  the  side  in  consequence  of  concus- 
sion ;  at  the  same  time  he  was  able  to  form  a  correct  estimate 
of  the  weight  of  bodies  with  his  right  hand.  The  physician 
observed  by  Marcet,  who  was  affected  with  anesthesia  cutanea 
of  the  right  side,  was  perfectly  able  to  feel  his  patient's  pulse 
with  the  fingers  of  the  right  hand  and  to  determine  its  frequency 
and  force,  but  in  order  to  determine  the  temperature  of  the  skin 
he  was  obliged  to  call  in  the  aid  of  his  left  hand."  Anesthesia 
of  the  muscle,  without  loss  of  tactile  power,  does,  according  to 
Eomberg,  invariably  accompany  the  disease  called  tabes  dorsalis.* 

*  It  must  be  remembered  that  simple  loss  of  muscular  feeling  is  not  Tabes 
Dorsalis  ;  in  this  disease,  the  characteristic  phenomenon  is  a  loss  of  the  power  of 
co-ordination  of  the  muscles,  and  the  morbid  appearances  are  those  of  degeneration 
of  the  posterior  columns  of  the  spinal  cord — the  motor  repository  or  centres  of 


vin.]  OR  MOTORIUM  COMMUNE.  ]J5 

The  eyes  of  patients  so  affected  are  their  regulators  or  feelers, 
and  consequently  their  helplessness  when  their  eyes  are  shut  or 
they  are  in  the  dark  is  extreme  ;  if  told  to  shut  their  eyes  while 
in  the  erect  posture,  they  begin  to  oscillate  until  they  fall  down, 
unless  supported.  The  skin  remains  sensitive  except  during  the 
last  stage  of  the  disease. 

Eomberg,  Duchenne,  and  others  have,  moreover,  described 
similar  morbid  conditions  in  anaemic  and  hysterical  women,  but 
which  can  hardly  be  called  paralysis,  as  they  are  manifest  only 
in  the  night  or  when  the  eyes  are  shut :  the  patients  can  perform 
movements,  but  these  do  not  answer  accurately  to  the  will ; 
they  are  deceived  as  to  the  amount  of  force  necessary  to  be  put 
forth,  and  sometimes  cannot  undertake  the  movement  of  a  limb 
without  the  help  of  sight.  In  these  cases  there  is  the  desire  to 
effect  a  certain  action,  there  is  the  motor  intuition  of  the  move- 
ment necessary  to  the  end  desired,  but  there  is  wanting  the 
guiding  sensation  of  the  muscular  sense ;  and  accordingly  the 
action  cannot  be  done  unless  the  sense  of  sight  takes  upon  it 
the  function  of  the  defective  muscular  sense. 

What  relation  has  the  muscular  sense  to  the  motor  intuition  ? 
It  is  not  an  easy  question  to  answer  either  from  a  psychological 
or  from  a  physiological  basis.  The  relation  appears  to  be  not 
unlike  that  which  the  sensation  of  a  special  sense  has  to  the 
corresponding  idea :  as  the  sensation  of  the  special  sense  is 
necessary  to  the  formation  of  the  idea,  but,  this  once  formed, 
not  necessary  to  its  existence  or  function,  so  the  muscular  feeling 
would  seem  to  be  an  essential  prerequisite  to  the  formation  of 
the  motor  intuition,  but,  this  once  formed,  not  necessary  to  its 
latent  existence,  or,  indeed,  to  its  active  function,  provided  only 
another  sense  furnish  the  guiding  information.  Like  other  senses 
the  muscular  sense  is  receptive  ;  it  ministers  to  the  building  up 
of  the  fundamental  ideas  of  solidity,  size,  figure,  and  distance, 
through  an  internal  adaptation  to  external  nature ;  and  in  the 
outward  intelligent  reaction  of  the  individual,  by  virtue  of  these 

co-ordination  of  the  movements  of  the  limbs.  Hence  the  disease  is  now  more 
properly  called  Progressive  Loconjotor  Ataxy.  Loss  of  muscular  feeling  is  a 
symptom  that  may  occur  in  different  diseases ;  if  another  sense  takes  its  place, 
movements  are  still  effected  ;  so  that  the  power  of  movement,  the  repository  of 
motor  residua,  is  not  affected. 


176  MOTOR  NERFOUS  CENTRES.  [CHAP. 

ideas,  upon  external  nature  it  furnishes  the  guiding  feeling  by 
which  he  is  enabled  to  direct  the  action  and  to  regulate  the 
amount  of  force  applied  in  any  given  case.  How  admirably 
graduated  is  the  application  of  force  by  the  hand  in  delicate 
handicraft  operations !  How  clumsy  and  incapable  is  the  be- 
ginner in  such  crafts  until  by  frequent  practice  the  requisite 
motor  intuitions  have  been  acquired  !  Consider  how  awkward 
any  one  is  at  so  simple  a  matter  as  winding  up  a  watch  even 
for  the  first  time  ;  and  how  quick,  easy,  and  certain  the  opera- 
tion afterwards  becomes.  Observations  made  upon  persons  born 
blind  prove  that  there  is  nothing  essential  to  the  highest  intel- 
lectual processes  that  may  not  be  acquired  in  the  absence  of 
sight,  mainly  through  the  muscular  feeling  in  combination  with 
touch. 

Because  the  muscular  feelings  gradually  build  up  the  motor 
intuitions  in  accordance  with  the  order,  synchronous  or  succes- 
sive, of  our  experience,  it  is  not  difficult  to  deceive  them  by 
a  new  experience  modifying  or  reversing  that  order.  It  is  well 
known  that  if  the  middle  finger  be  crossed  over  the  fore-finger 
and  a  pea  or  a  like  round  body  be  put  between  them,  while 
the  eyes  are  turned  away,  there  will  be  the  sensations  of  two 
bodies  ;  the  impression  on  that  side  of  the  fore-finger  which  is 
habitually  associated  in  action  with  the  thumb  excites  indepen- 
dently its  residua,  and  that  side  of  the  middle  finger  which  is 
accustomed  to  act  with  the  third  finger  excites  also  its  residua ; 
and  the  consequence  is  a  feeling  of  two  bodies  which  it  requires 
the  evidence  of  another  sense  to  correct.  So  closely,  however, 
are  our  different  senses  associated  in  their  functions,  that  they 
may  instead  of,  as  is  their  proper  function,  aiding  and  correcting 
one  another,  sometimes  even  help  to  deceive  one  another.  When 
the  metal  potassium  was  first-  shown  to  an  eminent  philosopher, 
he  exclaimed,  on  taking  it  into  his  hand,  "  Bless  me,  how  heavy 
it  is  !  "  and  yet  potassium  is  so  light  as  to  float  on  water.  The 
metallic  appearance  had  suggested  a  certain  resistance,  or  the 
putting  forth  of  so  much  muscular  energy  as  previous  experience 
of  substances  having  a  similar  look  had  proved  necessary ;  and 
for  a  moment  the  suggestion  of  the  visual  sense  overswayed  the 
actual  experience  of  the  muscular  sense :  the  muscular  sense 
was  deceived  as  the  man  is  who  concludes  that  a  certain  co 


vin.]  OR  MOTORIUM  COMMUNE, 

existence1  or  succession  in  nature  must  always  exist  because  he  has 
observed  it  in  a  great  many  instances  ;  or  as,  at  the  disinterment 
of  a  body  suspected  to  have  been  murdered,  one  of  the  spectators, 
who  fainted  on  account  of  the  bad  smell,  was  deceived ;  for  when 
the  coffin  was  opened  it  was  found  to  be  empty. 

The  perfect  function  of  the  muscular  sense  is  not  only  of 
essential  importance  to  the  expression  of  our  active  life,  but,  like 
the  function  of  any  one  of  the  special  senses,  it  has  its  due  part 
in  our  mental  life.  In  the  general  paralysis  of  the  insane  there 
are  two  prominent  characteristics  :  the  first  is  the  general  para- 
lysis in  greater  or  less  degree  of  the  muscles  of  the  body ;  and 
the  second  is  the  extraordinary  delusions  of  grandeur.  It  is  a 
question  well  worth  consideration,  whether  these  characteristic 
symptoms  do  not  stand  in  some  degree  of  causal  connexion  to 
one  another.  A  tailor  who  is  suffering  from  general  paralysis 
will  promise  to  make  you  a  magnificent  waistcoat,  and,  if  the 
materials  are  supplied  to  him,  will  at  once  set  to  work.  It  is 
not  improbable  that,  deceived  by  his  quiet  assurance,  and  know- 
ing that  to  sew  is  his  business,  you  believe  that  he  may  make 
the  waistcoat.  But  in  a  little  while  you  will  find  that  his 
stitches  are  most  unequal  in  size,  and  are  placed  in  the  most 
disorderly  way  ;  and  it  is  made  clear  that,  whatever  he  himself 
may  think,  he  certainly  cannot  sew.  He  has  a  sufficient  desire 
to  accomplish  the  result,  an  adequate  general  notion  of  the  end 
desired,  a.  full  belief  in  his  ability  to  effect  it ;  but  he  fails 
because  his  muscular  feeling  is  very  deficient,  and  because  he 
cannot  regulate  the  action  of  the  necessary  muscles.  That  is 
not  all,  however :  as  the  sleeper,  whose  external  senses  are  so 
closed  as  to  shut  out  the  controlling  influence  of  external  objects, 
often  does  in  his  dreams  the  most  wonderful  things,  and  finds 
little  or  no  hindrance  to  an  almost  miraculous  activity,  intel- 
lectual or  bodily ;  so  the  general  paralytic,  whose  defective 
muscular  feeling  cuts  him  off  from  the  due  appreciation  of 
external  relations,  has  engendered  in  his  mind  the  most  extrava- 
gant notions  as  to  his  personal  power ;  he  dreams  with  his  eyes 
open.  As  it  is  to  the  muscular  sense  that  we  owe  the  develop- 
ment of  our  fundamental  ideas  of  resistance,  form,  size,  and  space, 
it  may  easily  be  understood  that,  when  it  is  deficient  throughout 
the  body,  as  in  the  general  paralytic,  there  should  not  be  that 
13 


1/8  MOTOR  NERFOUS  CENTRES,  [CHAP. 

intelligent  accord  between  the  inner  life  and  the  outward  rela- 
tions which,  when  in  a  perfect  state,  it  maintains.  Here,  again, 
we  perceive  how  impossible  it  is  to  separate  the  mental  from 
the  bodily  life  :  how  plainly,  when,  we  scan  the  deeper  rela- 
tions of  things  in  their  genesis,  there  are  displayed  the  closest 
connexion  and  continuity  of  parts  and  functions. 

To  the  action  of  the  will,  as  already  pointed  out,  a  conception 
of  the  result  is  essential,  whether  the  volitional  exertion  be  for 
the  purpose  of  causing  a  movement,  of  preventing  or  checking  a 
movement,  or  of  dismissing  a  painful  idea  from  the  mind.  When 
a  sensation  excites  a  co-ordinate  movement  in  so-called  sensori- 
motor  action,  we  do  not  say  there  is  a  conception  of  the  result, 
because  of  the  absence  of  consciousness ;  but  at  the  same  time 
we  must  admit  that  there  is  a  motor  intuition  of  the  result, — in 
other  words,  that  there  is  a  definitely  organized  residuum  in  the 
proper  motor  nervous  centre,  which,  as  it  were,  implicitly  con- 
tains the  movement.  Now  it  is  important  to  bear  in  mind  that, 
when  the  will  excites  that  co-ordinate  movement  which  a  sensa- 
tion alone  may  do,  as  not  unfrequently  happens,  the  will  cannot 
operate  directly  on  the  motor  nerves,  but  must  necessarily 
operate  through  the  medium  of  the  same  motor  intuition  as 
that  through  which  the  sensation  acts :  in  other  words,  the 
movement  in  both  cases  proceeds  directly  from  the  motor  ner- 
vous centre  in  which  the  movement  is  latent.  If  we  could 
excite  these  centres  artificially,  not  over-exciting  and  injuring 
them  as  in  our  gross  experiments  we  necessarily  do,  then  we 
should  not  fail  to  set  free  the  definite  movements.  Speaking 
psychologically,  the  conception  of  the  result  becomes,  in  the 
execution  of  voluntary  movements,  the  motor  intuition,  and  the 
motor  intuition  excited  into  activity  expresses  itself  in  the 
designed  movement.  Thus,  then,  it  appears  that  as  in  the  action 
of  nature  upon  man  the  stimulus  which  is  not  reflected  in  the 
spinal  cord  passes  upwards  and  excites  sensation,  and  the 
stimulus  which  is  not  reflected  in  sensori-motor  action  passes 
upwards  and  becomes  idea,  and  the  stimulus  which  is  not 
reflected  in  ideomotor  action  passes  from  cell  to  cell  in  the 
hemispheres  and  excites  reflection ;  so  in  the  reaction  of  man 
upon  nature,  the  force  of  the  will  passes  downwards  through  the 
subordinate  centres  in  an  opposite  direction  :  the  will  involves 


vni.]  OR  MOTORIUM  COMMUNE.  179 

a  conception  of  the  result  or  a  definite  ideational  action ;  the 
conception  of  the  result  demands  for  its  further  transforma- 
tion the  appropriate  motor  intuition;  and  the  motor  intuition, 
in  whatever  motor  centre,  spinal  or  cerebral,  it  is  organized, 
demands  for  its  due  expression  in  movement  the  perfect  function 
of  the  muscular  feeling,  and  the  integrity  of  the  motor  nerves 
and  muscles.  There  is  an  orderly  subordination  of  the  different 
nervous  centres,  a  chain  of  means  such  as  is  revealed  in  every 
department  of  nature.  Viewing  the  different  sciences,  we  per- 
ceive that  chemistry  is  dependent  on  physics,  while  physics 
are  independent  of  chemistry ;  physiology  is  dependent  on  che- 
mistry, while  chemistry  is  independent  of  physiology;  social 
science  is  dependent  on  physiology,  while  physiology  is  indepen- 
dent of  social  science  :  and  so  the  just  analysis  of  our  mental  life 
proves  that  sensori-motor  action  is  dependent  on  reflex  action, 
while  reflex  action  is  independent  of  sensori-motor  action  ;  ideo- 
motor  action  dependent  on  sensori-motor  action,  while  sensori- 
motor  action  is  independent  of  ideomotor  action;  the  will 
dependent  on  ideomotor  action,  while  ideomotor  action  is  in- 
dependent of  the  will.  These  different  epochs  in  the  order  of 
development  of  the  nervous  system  are  represented  by  different 
classes  of  the  lower  animals  :  and  it  is  interesting  to  note  that, 
as  in  man  there  is  a  subordination  of  parts,  and  the  will,  as  the 
highest  energy,  controls  the  inferior  modes  of  nervous  energy, 
so  in  the  animal  kingdom  there  is  a  subordination  of  kinds,  and 
the  mind  of  man,  as  the  highest  development,  controls  and  uses 
many  of  the  lower  animals. 

If  execution  has  been  in  any  wise  answerable  to  conception, 
we  have  now  said  enough  to  prove  the  importance  of  that  region 
of  mental  activity  in  which  dwell  the  motor  residua,  and  which 
may  properly  be  named  the  region  of  actuation.  We  have  only 
to  add  that  men  differ  much  naturally  as  to  the  perfection  of 
this  as  of  other  mental  faculties.  There  are  some  who,  with 
great  intellectual  power,  never  can  attain  to  the  ability  of  suc- 
cessfully expressing  themselves  :  and  there  are  others,  on  the 
other  hand,  who  can  pour  forth  endless  talk  with  the  most  facile 
fluency.  The  art  of  expression  in  speech,  or  in  writing,  or  even 
in  eloquence  of  action,  is  one  which,  if  there  is  not  an  innate 
faculty  for  it,  can  never  be  acquired  in  its  highest  perfection  : 


180  MOTOR  NERVOUS  CENTRES,  [CHAP. 

unseen  fetters  hinder  the  full  utterance,  and  lame  execution  falls 
far  short  of  ambitious  conception  :  with  the  distinct  conception 
of  what  they  would  say,  and  the  best  will  to  say  it,  there  is 
something  wanting  in  the  region  of  actuation,  whereby  they  are 
prevented  from  doing  justice  to  their  thoughts,  and  are  com- 
pelled, like  Moses,  to  delegate  that  function  to  others.  "  There 
is  Aaron  :  he  shall  be  thy  speaker,  and  thou  shalt  be  to  him 
instead  of  God"  (Exodus  iv.  16).* 


KOTES. 

1  (p.  170). — "The  sensation  of  muscular  action  is  of  the  greater 
consequence,"  says  Eomberg, "  with  regard  to  the  function  of  sight.    The 
perception  of  the  movement  of  visual  objects  depends  as  well  upon  the 
progress  of  the  image  upon  the  retina  as  upon  the  sensations  of  the 
muscles  of  the  eye  being  reduced  to  consciousness  ;  the  fatigue  of  these 
muscles  operates  injuriously  upon  the  power  of  vision,  and  appears  to  be 
the  cause  of  the  painful  affection  to  which  hitherto  tbe  term  Jiebetudo 
visits  has  been  applied.     The  affected  eye  at  first  sees  equally  well 
with  tbe  bealthy  eye,  in  close  proximity,  and  at  a  distance,  and  is 
equally  able  to  distinguish  clearly  tbe  most  minute  objects ;  but  the 
power  of  endurance  in  tbe  exercise  of  this  function  soon  ceases  ; 
almost  with,  every  movement  tbe  patient  loses  tbis  facility  of  accurately 
discriminating.     Objects  placed  at  a  small  distance  apparently  become 
confused,  and  a  rapidly  increasing,  and  at  last  insupportable,  sense  of 
weight,  tension,  and  fatigue,  in  tbe  orbital  and  frontal  regions,  force 
tbe  patient  entirely  to  desist  from  continued  exercise  of  his  eyes  ;  if 
be  perseveres,  beadacbe  and  giddiness   supervene." — Diseases  of  the 
Nervous  System,  vol.  i.  p.  92.     Tbe  condition  is  doubtless  attributable 
to  tbe  weariness  of  the  muscles  and  their  nerves ;  they  are  too  weak 
to  accommodate  themselves. 

2  (p.  171). — Though  it  is  proved  by  examples  of  deaf  and  dumb  people, 
notably  by  tbe  example  of  Laura  Bridgman,  who  was  deaf,  dumb,  and 
blind,  that  a  person  may  bave  human  thought  without  being  able  to 
speak,  yet  it  is  by  no  means  proved  that  it  is  possible  to  think  without 
any  means  of  physical  expression.     On  tbe  contrary,  the  evidence  is 
all  tbe  other  way.     Laura  Bridgman's  fingers  worked,  making  tbe 

*  And  a  greater  than  Hoses  or  Aaron  was  so  gifted  with  the  faculty  of 
excellent  expression,  that  it  was  justly  said  of  Him  that  "  Never  man  spake  as 
this  man  speaks. " 


Tin.]  OR  MOTORIUM  COMMUNE.  Ig] 

initial  movements  for  letters  of  the  finger  alphabet,  not  only  durin" 
her  waking  thoughts,  but  even  in  her  dreams.  Heyse,  in  his  System 
der  Sprachwissenschaft,  Berlin,  1856,  says,  p.  39  : — "Herein  lies  the 
necessity  of  utterance,  the  representation  of  thought.  Thought  is 
not  even  present  to  the  thinker,  till  he  has  set  it  forth  out  of 
himself.  Man,  as  an  individual  endowed  with  sense  and  mind,  first 
attains  to  thought,  and,  at  the  same  time,  to  comprehension  of  himself, 
in  setting  forth  out  of  himself  the  contents  of  his  mind,  and  in  this 
his  free  production  he  comes  to  the  knowledge  of  himself,  his 
thinking  '  I.'  He  comes  first  to  himself  in  uttering  himself."  On 
this  question  there  are  some  excellent  remarks  in  the  Early  History  of 
Mankind,  by  E.  B.  Tylor,  1865. 

3  (jp.  172). — "  I  had  some  years  since,"  Dr.  Whytt  writes,  "a  patient 
affected  with  an  erysipelas  in  his  face,  who,  when  awake,  was  free  from 
any  confusion  iii  his  ideas  ;  but  no  sooner  did  he  shut  his  eyes,  although 
not  asleep,  than  his  imagination  began  to  be  greatly  disturbed.     He 
thought  himself  carried  swiftly  through  the  air  to  distant  regions ; 
and  sometimes  imagined  his  head,  arms,  and  legs  to  be  separated  from 
his  body,  and  to  fly  off  different  ways." — Obs.  on  Nature,  Causes,  and 
Cure  of  Nervous  Hypochondriacal,  or  Hysteric  Disorders,  1765. 

Illusory  movements  or  illusory  positions  are  the  characteristic  traits  of 
vertigo  ;  other  subjective  sensations,  such  as  noises  in  the  ears,  corus- 
cations before  the  eyes,  painful  sensations  in  the  head,  often  being 
associated  with  them.  In  dreams,  and  also  in  drunkenness,  there  is 
no  possibility  of  correcting  these  subjective  muscular  symptoms  at  the 
time ;  and  the  brain,  the  organ  of  the  mind,  renders  them  conscious, 
and  thus  converts  them  into  erroneous  conceptions  of  space. 

4  (p.  173). — Eomberg  gives  a  remarkable  case  of  what  he  calls  rotatory 
spasm  in  a  girl  of  ten  years  of  age.     Also,  "  Co-ordinated  spasm  occa- 
sionally enters  into  a  combination  with  chorea;  of  this  I  have  met  with  an 
instance  in  a  boy  cet .  six,  who  was  occasionally  attacked  with  an  irresis- 
tible desire  to  climb  in  spite  of  every  impediment ;  in  the  intervals  he 
was  affected  with  chorea." — Vol.  ii.  p.  169.  Consciousness  may  or  may 
not  be  quite  abolished.     In  certain  cases   of  cerebral  hemorrhage, 
syllables  or  words  are  uttered  without  any  mental  act  on  the  part  of 
the  patient,  or  even  against  his  will. 


CHAPTEE  IX. 

MEMORY  AND  IMAGINATION. 

"You  tell  me  it  consists  of  images  or  pictures  of  tilings.  Where  is  this 
extensive  canvas  hung  up  ?  or  where  are  the  numerous  receptacles  in  which  these 
are  deposited  ?  or  to  what  else  in  the  animal  system  have  they  any  similitude  ? 
That  pleasing  picture  of  objects  represented  in  miniature  on  the  retina  of  the  eye 
seems  to  have  given  rise  to  this  illusive  oratory.  It  was  forgot  that  this  repre- 
sentation belongs  rather  to  the  laws  of  light  than  to  those  of  life  ;  and  may  with 
equal  elegance  be  seen  in  the  camera  obscura  as  in  the  eye  ;  and  that  the  picture 
vanishes  for  ever  when  the  object  is  withdrawn."  —  DR.  DARWIN,  Zoonomia. 


Memory  has  not  hitherto  been  specially  treated  of 
-*-  as  a  faculty  of  the  mind,  its  true  nature  has  been  none  the 
less  discussed  largely,  though  incidentally,  in  the  foregoing  pages. 
It  may  be  desirable,  however,  to  bring  together  into  one  body 
the  fundamental  facts  concerning  it.  There  is  memory  in  every 
nervous  cell,  and,  indeed,  in  every  organic  element  of  the  body. 
The  permanent  effects  of  a  particular  virus  on  the  constitution, 
as  that  of  small-pox,  or  that  of  syphilis,  prove  that  the  organic 
element  remembers  for  the  rest  of  life  certain  modifications  which 
it  has  suffered  ;  the  manner  in  which  the  scar  on  a  child's  finger 
grows  as  the  body  grows  evinces,  as  Mr.  Paget  has  pointed  out, 
that  the  organic  element  of  the  part  does  not  forget  the  impression 
that  has  been  made  upon  it  ;  and  all  that  has  so  far  been  said 
respecting  the  different  nervous  centres  of  the  body  cannot  fail 
to  demonstrate  the  existence  of  memory  in  the  nervous  cells 
which  lie  scattered  in  the  heart  and  in  the  intestinal  walls,  in 
those  that  are  collected  together  in  the  spinal  cord,  in  the  cells 
of  the  sensory  and  the  motor  ganglia,  and  in  the  ideational  cells 
of  the  cortical  layers  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres.  The  residua 
by  which  our  faculties,  as  already  shown,  are  built  up,  are  the 
organic  conditions  of  memory.  These  organized  residua  of  the 


CHAP,  ix.]  MEMORY  AND  IMAGINATION.  183 

cerebral  centres,  which,  when  excited  into  activity  by  some  ex- 
ternal impression,  enable  us  to  perceive  distinctly,  or  apprehend 
the  object,  appear,  when  excited  by  some  internal  cause,  as 
memory  or  recollection.  "When  an  organic  registration  has  been 
completely  effected,  and  the  function  of  it  has  become  automatic, 
we  do  not  usually  speak  of  the  process  as  one  of  memory,  because 
it  is  entirely  unconscious.  Thus,  for  example,  when  a  beginner 
is  learning  his  notes  on  the  pianoforte,  he  has  deliberately  to  call 
to  mind  each  note ;  but  when,  by  frequent  practice,  he  has 
acquired  complete  skill  in  playing  on  that  instrument,  there  is 
no  conscious  memory,  but  his  movements  are  automatic,  and  so 
rapid  as  to  surpass  the  rapidity  of  succession  of  conscious  ideas. 
As  with  such  movements,  so  it  is  with  many  ideas,  which  are  so 
completely  organized  that  they  are  automatically  and  quickly 
performed  in  our  mental  life  without  conscious  memory.^) 

The  organic  registration  of  the  results  of  impressions  upon  our 
nervous  centres,  by  which  the  mental  faculties  are  built  up,  and 
by  which  memory  is  rendered  possible,  is  the  fundamental  pro- 
cess of  the  mental  life.  There  can  be  no  memory  of  what  we 
have  not  had  experience  in  whole  or  in  parts ;  and  nothing  of 
which  we  have  had  experience  can  be  absolutely  forgotten. 
But  it  is  most  mischievous  to  regard  mental  phenomena  as  mere 
pictures  of  nature,  and  the  mind  as  a  vast  canvas,  on  which 
they  are  cunningly  painted.  Such  representation,  as  Darwin 
well  observes,  belongs  rather  to  the  laws  of  light  than  to  those  of 
life;  the  real  process  is  one  of  organization,  and  is  rightly  con- 
ceivable only  by  the  aid  of  ideas  derived  from  the  observation  of 
organic  development,  namely,  the  fundamental  ideas  of  Assimila- 
tion and  Differentiation. 

There  is  in  mental  development,  then,  the  organic  registration 
of  the  simple  ideas  of  the  different  senses ;  there  is  the  assimila- 
tion of  the  like  in  ideas  which  take  place  in  the  production  or 
organic  evolution  of  general  ideas  ;  there  is  the  special  organiza- 
tion, or  differentiation,  or  discrimination,  of  unlike  ideas ;  and 
there  is  the  organic  combination  of  the  ideas  derived  from  the 
different  senses  into  one  complex  idea,  with  the  further  manifold 
combinations  of  complex  ideas  into  what  Hartley  called  duplex 
ideas.  In  fact,  no  limit  is  assignable  to  the  complexity  of 
combinations  which  may  go  to  the  formation  of  an  idea.  Take, 
for  example,  the  idea  of  the  universe.  But  how  comes  it 


184  MEMORY  AND  IMAGINATION.  [CHAP. 

to  pass  that  a  new  creation  of  the  mind,  to  which  nothing  in 
nature  answers,  is  effected?  By  a  similar  organic  process  to 
that  by  which  like  residua  are  blended,  and  general  or  abstract 
ideas  formed.  There  are  no  actual  existences  answering  to  our 
most  abstract  ideas,  which  are,  therefore,  so  far  new  creations  of 
the  mind.  In  their  formation  there  is  a  comparison  of  our  ideas, 
and  a  blending  or  coalescence  of  their  like  relations  takes  place 
— the  development  of  a  concept.  There  is,  as  it  were,  an  extrac- 
tion of  the  essential  out  of  the  particular,  a  sublimation  of  the 
concrete ;  and,  by  the  creation  of  a  new  world  in  which  these 
essential  ideas  supersede  the  concrete  ideas,  the  power  of  the 
mind  is  most  largely  extended.  Although  there  is  no  concrete 
object  in  nature  answering  to  these  abstract  ideas,  yet  they  are 
none  the  less,  when  rightly  formed,  valid  and  real  subjective 
existences  that  express  the  essential  relations  of  things,  as  the 
flower  which  crowns  development  expresses  the  essential  nature 
of  the  plant.  Thus  it  is  that  we  rise  from  the  particular  idea  of 
a  man  to  the  general  idea  of  man,  and  then  again  to  the  abstract 
idea  of  virtue ;  so  that  for  the  future  we  can  make  use  of  the 
abstract  idea  in  all  our  reasoning,  without  being  compelled  to 
make  continual  reference  to  the  concrete.*  Herein,  be  it  remem- 
bered again,  we  have  a  process  corresponding  with  that  which 
ministers  to  the  production  of  our  motor  intuitions  ;  the  acquired 
faculty  of  certain  co-ordinate  movements  through  which  com- 
plicated acts  are  automatically  performed,  and  we  are  able  to  do, 
almost  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  what  would  cost  hours  of 
labour  if  we  were  compelled  on  each  occasion  to  go  deliberately 
through  the  process  of  special  adaptation,  is  the  equivalent,  on 
the  motor  side,  of  the  general  idea  by  which  so  much  time  and 
labour  are  saved  in  reasoning  :  in  both  cases  there  is  an  internal 
development  in  accordance  with  fundamental  laws,  and  the 
organized  result  is,  as  every  new  phase  of  development  is,  a  new 
creation.  Creation  is  not  by  fits  and  starts,  but  it  is  continuous 
in  nature. 

These  considerations  are  of  importance  in  respect  of  the  nature 
of  Imagination,  which  must  ever  be  incomprehensible  on  the 
mischievous  assumption  of  ideas  as  pictures  or  images  of  things 

*  But  it  should  not  be  forgotten,  as  it  is  so  apt  to  be,  that  the  meaning  of  the 
general  or  abstract  is  to  be  sought  in  the  concrete,  not  the  interpretation  of  the 
concrete  in  the  general  or  abstract. 


ix.]  MEMORY  AND  IMAGINATION.  ]g5 

painted  on  the  mind.  Though  imagination  is  certainly  depen- 
dent on  memory,  is  it  not,  it  may  be  asked,  more  than  reproduc- 
tive,— is  it  not,  in  fact,  productive  ?  Productive,  we  reply,  as  to 
form,  but  certainly  only  reproductive  as  to  material.  When  any 
one  affirms  that  he  can  imagine  something — as,  for  example,  some 
animal  of  which  he  has  not  had  experience,  what  he  does  is  to 
combine  into  one  form  certain  selected  characters  of  different 
animals  of  which  he  has  had  experience;  creating  in  thisVay, 
as  nature  is  continually  doing,  new  forms  out  of  old  material. 
When  the  artist  embodies  in  ideal  form  the  result  of  his  faithful 
observation,  he  has,  by  virtue  of  that  mental  process  through 
which  general  ideas  are  formed,  abstracted  the  essential  from  the 
concrete,  and  then  by  the  shaping  power  of  imagination  given  to 
it  a  new  embodiment.  In  every  great  work  of  art  there  is  thus 
an  involution  of  the  universal  in  the  concrete.  It  is  pregnant  in 
its  meaning,  and  yields  a  wide  range  to  the  activities  of  another's 
imagination  when  he  contemplates  it ;  and  therefore  it  is  that 
high  art  cannot  express  anything  essentially  evanescent :  it  con- 
fers on  the  moment  the  stedfastness  of  eternity,  represents  the 
"  shows  of  nature  frozen  into  a  motionless  immortality."  The  man 
of  science,  who  unlocks  the  secrets  of  Nature  by  means  of  obser- 
vation, experiment,  and  reflection,  thus  systematically  training 
his  mind  in  conformity  with  Nature  by  exact  interrogation  and 
faithful  interpretation  of  her  works,  has  recourse,  when  he  pro- 
ceeds to  react  upon  nature,  to  a  scientific  imagination  thus  care- 
fully cultivated,  and  is  enabled  to  construct  wonderful  works  of 
art  that  are  truly  an  advance  upon,  or  a  development  of,  nature 
— new  creations.  What  else  then,  fundamentally,  is  the  true 
imagination  but  the  nisus  of  nature's  organic  development  dis- 
playing itself  in  man's  highest  function  ?  What  is  human  art 
but  nature  developed  through  man  ?  There  is  going  on  a  recrea- 
tion of  nature  by  human  means,  but  nature  makes  the  means.* 

*  "  Yet  nature  is  made  better  by  no  meau, 

But  nature  makes  that  mean  ;  so,  over  that  art, 
Which,  you  say,  adds  to  nature,  is  an  art 
That  nature  makes 

This  is  an  art 

Which  does  mend  nature — change  it,  rather  :  but 
The  art  itself  is  nature."— TFwter's  Tale. 


186  MEMORY  AND  IMAGINATION.  [CHAP. 

The  productive  or  creative  power  of  Imagination,  which  seems  at 
first  sight  to  be  irreconcilable  with  knowledge  gained  entirely 
through  experience,  is  then  at  bottom  another,  though  the 
highest,  manifestation  of  that  force  which  impels  organic  deve- 
lopment throughout  nature  ;  and  the  imagination  of  any  one 
creates  truly,  or  brings  forth  abortions  and  monstrosities,  accord- 
ing as  the  mind  is  well  stored  with  sound  knowledge,  and  has 
true  concepts,  or  as  it  is  inadequately  furnished  with  knowledge, 
or  is  furnished  with  erroneous  concepts — according,  in  fact,  as 
the  individual  is  or  is  not  in  harmony  with  nature.  As  imagina- 
tion is  an  example  of  organic  evolution,  so  the  well-grounded 
imagination  of  the  philosopher  or  the  poet  is  the  highest  display 
of  nature's  organic  evolution. *(2) 

How  much  of  what  we  call  memory  is  in  reality  imagination  ! 
When  we  think  to  recall  the  actual,  the  concrete,  it  is  often  the 
ideal,  the  general,  that  we  produce  ;  and  when  we  believe  that 
we  are  remembering,  wre  are,  influenced  by  the  feelings  of  the 
moment,  and  not  able  to  reproduce  the  feelings  of  the  past,  mis- 
remembering.  The  faculty  by  which  we  recall  a  scene  of  the 
past,  and  represent  it  vividly  to  the  mind,  is  at  bottom  the  same 
faculty  as  that  by  which  we  represent  to  the  imagination  a  scene 
which  we  have  not  witnessed.  "  For  ^avraC^aBi  and  meminisse, 
fancy  and  memory,  differ  only  in  this,  that  memory  supposes 
the  time  past,  which  fancy  doth  not."  How  much  of  our 
perception  even  is  actually  imagination  !  'The  past  perception 
unavoidably  mingles  in  the  present  act,  prevents  us  often  from 
discriminating  minute  differences  which  exist,  and  thus  causes 
us  to  perceive  wrongly  or  observe  incorrectly.  "What  shall  be 
admitted  as  a  fact  in  scientific  observation,  depends  entirely 
upon  the  observer's  previous  knowledge  and  training.  So  strong 
is  the  disposition  to  assimilate  a  present  observation  with  a  past 
perception,  to  blend  together  the  like  in  two  ideas,  that  we  are 
apt  to  overlook  those  special  differences  which  demand  a  discri- 
mination or  organic  differentiation ;  there  is,  indeed,  almost  as 
great  a  danger  of  hasty  generalization  in  perception  as  there  is 

»  "All  power  is  of  one  kind,"  says  Emerson,  "  a  sharing  of  the  nature  of  the 
world.  The  mind  that  is  parallel  with  the  laws  of  nature  will  be  in  the  current 
of  events,  and  strong  with  their  strength.  One  man  is  made  of  the  same  stuff  of 
which  events  are  made  ;  is  in  sympathy  with  the  course  of  things,  can  predict 
them." 


K.]  MEMORY  AND  IMAGINATION. 

in  reasoning.  If  a  new  observation  will  not  easily  assimilate 
with  existing  ideas,  there  is  a  feeling  of  dissatisfaction  and 
positive  discomfort,  and  one  is  apt  to  pass  the  unwelcome  fact 
by.  But  if  a  proper  mental  training  prevents  such  neglect,  the 
fact  is  deliberately  appropriated  or  registered  as  a  special  fact, 
although  small  satisfaction  is  felt  in  the  martyrdom  of  thus 
registering  it,  isolated  as  it  appears ;  after  a  while,  however, 
other  observations  cluster  about  it,  some  blending  with  it,  others 
connecting  it  with  ideas  to  which  it  seemed  entirely  unrelated, 
until  this  pariah  of  the  mind  is  found  perhaps  to  fill  up  a  gap 
in  knowledge,  and  organically  to  unite  distant  ideas.  It  is 
a  most  necessary  habit  to  acquire  in  the  true  cultivation  of 
the  mind,  that  of  observing  accurately,  carefully  noting  minute 
differences,  and  of  scrupulously  registering  them,  so  as  to  effect 
an  exact  internal  correspondence  with  external  specialities. 

As  we  perceive  more  accurately,  so  shall  we  remember  more 
correctly,  judge  more  soundly,  and  imagine  more  truly.  The 
habit  of  hasty  and  inexact  observation,  the  unwarranted  blending 
of  residua  that  are  not  truly  like,  is  necessarily  the  foundation 
of  a  habit  of  remembering  wrongly ;  and  the  habit  of  remem- 
bering wrongly  is  of  necessity  the  cause  of  an  incorrect  judgment 
and  erroneous  imagination :  exact  internal  correspondence  to 
external  relations  being  the  basis  of  an  imagination  true  to 
nature, — in  other  words,  of  a  true  organic  mental  development. 
For  these  reasons,  "the  whole  powers  of  the  soul  may,"  as 
Hartley  observes,  "  be  referred  to  the  memory,  when  taken  in 
a  large  sense.  Hence,  though  some  persons  may  have  strong 
memories  with  weak  judgments,  yet  no  man  can  have  a  strong 
judgment  with  a  weak  original  power  of  retaining  and  remem- 
bering." Infinite  mischief  and  confusion  have  been  caused  by 
the  habit  of  speaking  of  ideas  as  if  they  were  the  mechanical 
stamps  of  impressions  on  the  memory,  instead  of  as,  what  they 
truly  are,  organic  evolutions  in  respondence  to  definite  stimuli ; 
our  mental  life  is  not  a  copy  but  an  idealization  of  nature,  in 
accordance  with  fundamental  laws. 

As  organic  growth  and  development  take  place  in  obedience 
to  the  laws  of  nature,  and  yet  constitute  an  advance  upon  them, 
so  it  is  with  the  well-cultivated  or  truly  developed  imagination, 
wliich  brings  together  images  from  different  regions  of  nature, 


188  MEMORY  AND  IMAGINATION.  [CHAP. 

yokes  them  together  by  means  of  their  occult  but  real  relations, 
and,  thus  making  the  whole  one  image,  gives  a  unity  to  variety : 
there  is  an  obedient  recognition  of  nature,  and  there  is  a  develop- 
mental advance  upon  it.  This  esemplastic  faculty,  as  Coleridge, 
following  Schelling,  named  it,  is  indicated  by  the  German  word 
for  imagination,  namely,  Einbildung,  or  the  one-making  faculty. 
Its  highest  working  in  our  great  poets  and  philosophers  really 
affords  us  an  example  of  creation  going  steadily  on  as  a  natural 
process ;  and  creative  or  productive  activity  is  assuredly  the 
expression  of  the  highest  mental  action :  whosoever  has  such 
capacity  has  more  or  less  genius ;  whosoever  has  it  not  will  do 
nothing  great,  though  he  work  never  so  hard.  "What  an  amount 
has  been  unwisely  written  by  the  sedulous  followers  of  a  so- 
called  inductive  philosophy  in  disparagement  of  imagination 
and  in  favour  of  simple  observation  !  "  Men  should  consider," 
says  Bacon,  "  the  story  of  the  woman  in  ^Esop,  who  expected 
that  with  a  double  measure  of  barley  her  hen  would  lay  two 
eggs  a  day  ;  whereas  the  hen  grew  fat  and  laid  none."  It  were 
as  wise  in  a  man  to  load  his  stomach  with  stones  instead  of 
food  as  to  load  his  mind  with  facts  which  he  cannot  digest  and 
assimilate.  It  is  in  the  great  capacity  which  it  has  of  assimi- 
lating material  from  every  quarter,  and  of  developing  in  pro- 
portion, that  the  superiority  of  genius  consists  ;  and  it  is  in  the 
excellence  of  its  imagination,  whether  poetical,  artistic,  philo- 
sophic, or  scientific,  that  its  superior  energy  is  exhibited. 

Because  the  least  things  and  the  greatest  in  Nature  are  indis- 
solubly  bound  together  as  equally  essnetial  parts  of  the  myste- 
rious-, but  harmonious  whole,  therefore  the  intuition  into  one 
pure  circle  of  her  works  by  the  high  and  subtle  intellect  of  the 
genius  contains  implicitly  much  more  than  can  be  explicitly 
displayed  in  it.  Hence  it  comes  to  pass  at  times  that,  in  the 
investigation  of  a  new  order  of  events  by  such  an  intellect,  the 
law  of  them  will,  as  by  a  flash  of  intuition,  explicitly  declare 
itself  in  the  mind  after  comparatively  few  observations :  the 
imagination  successfully  anticipates  the  slow  results  of  patient 
and  systematic  research,  flooding  the  darkness  with  the  light  of 
a  true  interpretation,  and  thus  illuminating  the  obscure  relations 
and  intricate  connexions.  Therein  a  well-endowed  and  well- 
cultivated  mind  manifests  its  unconscious  harmony  with  nature. 


ix.]  MEMORY  AND  IMAGINATION.  189 

The  brightest  flashes  of  genius  come  unconsciously  and  without 
effort :  growth  is  not  a  voluntary  act,  although  the  gathering  of 
food  is. 

Certainly  the  intuition  of  truth  can  never  be  the  rule  amongst 
men,  inasmuch  as  the  genius  capable  of  intuition,  so  far  from 
being  common,  is  a  most  rare  exception  amongst  them.  And 
the  result,  however  brilliantly  acquired,  can  never  be  safely 
accepted  as  lasting  until  it  has  been  further  subjected  to  the 
tests  of  observation,  experiment,  and  logical  reasoning, — until  it 
has  undergone  verification.  The  man  of  genius  who  has  revealed 
a  great  truth  may  probably,  on  some  other  occasion,  promulgate 
an  equally  great  error.  Happily  his  errors  are  indirectly  most 
useful ;  for  the  experiments  and  observations  provoked  and 
directed  by  them,  and  prosecuted  for  the  purpose  of  displaying 
their  instability,  often  lead  to  valuable  discoveries.  Mischief  is 
undoubtedly  wrought  by  the  rash  promulgation  of  ill-grounded 
theories  on  the  part  of  those  who  have  neither  superior  original 
capacity,  nor  a  mind  well-stored  with  the  results  of  observation, 
nor  an  imagination  properly  cultivated.  It  is  the  ignorant  only, 
however,  whom  such  persons  deceive :  those  who  possess  an 
adequate  knowledge  of  the  subject  can  always  recognise  in  the 
unwarranted  theory  the  exact  amount  of  knowledge  which  its 
authors  have  had,  and  the  defective  character  of  their  minds. 
Those,  again,  who  take  a  philosophical  view  of  things,  and  look 
upon  the  progress  of  human  knowledge  as  a  development  that  is 
going  on  continuously  through  the  ages,  will  find  it  conformable 
to  their  experience  of  every  other  form  of  vital  growth  that  there 
should  be,  coincidently  with  advance,  a  retrograde  metamor- 
phosis, degeneration,  or  corruption  of  that  wliich  is  not  fitted 
for  assimilation,  and  which  is  ultimately  rejected :  as  the  body 
dies  daily  as  the  condition  of  its  life,  so  false  theories  and 
corrupt  doctrines  are  conditions  of  the  progress  of  knowledge. 
That  there  is  a  deep  distrust  of  hasty  generalization  is  a  mani- 
festation of  the  self-conservative  instinct ;  it  prevents  the  human 
mind  from  being  led  astray  by  vain  and  windy  doctrines,  and 
thus  promotes  a  true  development.  It  is  not,  however,  in  the 
individual,  where  so  much  active  change  takes  place  in  so  short 
a  time,  that  the  regular  corruption  and  decay  of  false  doctrines 
will  be  clearly  perceived,  but  in  the  historical  development  of 


190  MEMORY  AND  IMAGINATION.  [CHAP. 

the  race,  where  the  gradual  evolution  of  the  mind  may  be  better 
traced. 

Thus  much  concerning  memory  and  imagination,  which,  when 
properly  examined,  reveal,  better  perhaps  than  the  analysis  of 
any  other  of  the  so-called  mental  faculties,  the  complex  organi- 
zation which  mind  really  is.  It  remains  only  to  add  here,  that 
the  manifold  disorders  to  which  memory  is  liable  illustrate  in 
the  most  complete  manner  its  organic  nature.  Its  disorders  are 
numberless  in  degree  and  variety ;  for  there  is  not  only  every 
degree  of  dulness,  but  there  is  met  with  every  variety  of  partial 
loss,  as  of  syllables  in  a  particular  word,  of  certain  words,  places, 
names.  So  various  and  numerous  are.  they,  that  it  has  not  yet 
been  possible  to  reduce  them  to  any  system,  although  it  is  pro- 
bable that  a  careful  classification  of  them  might  be  very  useful 
All  that  we  can  at  present  conclude  from  them  is,  first,  that 
memory  is  an  organized  product;  and,  secondly,  that  it  is  an 
organization  extending  widely  through  the  cortical  layers  of  the 
cerebral  hemispheres.  It  is  interesting  to  observe  that  differences 
exist  in  different  persons  in  the  character  of  the  organic  function 
which  ministers  to  memory :  one  man,  for  example,  has  a  good 
memory  for  particular  facts,  but  is  no  way  remarkable  for  rea- 
soning power,  or  is  even  singularly  deficient  therein — the  regis- 
tration of  the  concrete  impressions  taking  place  with  the  greatest 
ease,  but  the  further  digestion  of  the  residua  not  being  accom- 
plished ;  another,  on  the  other  hand,  has  no  memory  for  par- 
ticular isolated  facts — they  must  have  some  relation  to  ideas 
already  appropriated,  or  must  fall  under  some  principle,  if  he  is 
to  recollect  them ;  the  digestion  of  residua  is  well  effected,  so 
that  there  exists  a  great  power  of  generalization.  The  latter  is 
the  memory  of  intellect ;  the  former  is  not  unfrequently  the 
memory  of  idiots. 

Some  flaw  in  the  memory,  some  breach  in  its  exquisite  organi- 
zation, is  ever  the  first  indication  of  a  disorder  or  degeneration 
of  nervous  element.  But  its  slight,  early  affections  are  very  apt 
to  be  overlooked,  forasmuch  as  they  do  not  reveal  themselves  in 
a  conscious  inability  to  remember  something,  but  in  an  uncon- 
scious deterioration  of  the  power  of  abstract  reasoning,  and  of 
the  moral  sense  that  is  so  closely  connected  therewith.  The 
most  delicately  organized  residua,  representing  the  highest  efforts 


ix.]  MEMORY  AND  IMAGINATION.  191 

of  organic  assimilation,  are  the  first  to  attest  by  their  sufferings 
any  interference  with  the  integrity  of  nervous  element.  Long 
before  there  is  any  palpable  loss  of  memory  in  insanity,  even 
before  an  individual  is  recognised  to  be  becoming  insane,  there 
is  a  derangement  of  his  highest  reasoning  and  of  his  moral 
qualities ;  his  character  is  more  or  less  altered,  and,  as  it  is  said, 
"he  is  not  himself/'  If  the  degeneration  of  nervous  element 
proceeds,  we  witness  successively  every  stage  of  declension  in 
the  disorder  of  the  complex  organization  of  the  memory ;  namely, 
manifest  perversion  of  the  higher  feelings,  greater  or  less  destruc- 
tion of  the  organic  connexions  of  ideas,  whence  follow  inco- 
herence of  thought  and,  finally,  general  forgetfulness,  declining 
into  complete  abolition  of  memory. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  understand  how  it  is  that  the  old  man 
sometimes  has  a  tenacious  memory  of  the  past,  and  can  reason 
tolerably  correctly  with  regard  to  it,  when  he  cannot  duly  appro- 
priate and  rightly  estimate  the  present.  The  brain,  like  every 
other  organ  of  the  body,  suffers  a  diminution  of  power  of  activity 
with  the  advance  of  age  ;  it  reacts  to  impressions  with  less  and 
less  vigour  and  vivacity,  and  there  is  less  and  less  capacity  to 
assimilate  the  influence  of  them,  so  that  there  is  a  dulness  of 
perception  and  an  incorrect  appreciation  of  events.  Meanwhile, 
however,  the  past  is  a  part  of  the  organic  nature  of  the  brain, 
and  may  be  sufficiently  remembered,  though  perhaps  with  less 
vivacity  than  formerly.  It  is  easy,  again  to  perceive  how  it  is 
that  children,  like  animals,  live  almost  entirely  in  the  present ; 
they  have  no  store  of  ideas  organized  in  the  mind  which  might 
be  called  into  activity  to  influence  the  present  idea,  and  they  react 
directly  to  the  impressions  made  upon  them.  The  best  possible 
evidence  of  the  gradual  process  of  mental  organization  is  indeed 
afforded  by  the  mental  phenomena  of  young  children ;  for  the 
residua  of  impressions  not  being  completely  organized,  their 
memory  is  fallacious,  and,  a  firm  organic  association  between 
ideas  not  being  established,  their  discourse  is  incoherent.  The 
old  man  and  the  child  both  fail  in  judgment :  the  former,  because 
he  has  forgotten  more  or  less -of  the  past,  and  has  lost  the 
standard  by  which  to  measure  the  present  perception,  or  because 
he  cannot  take  in  the  present  perception  and  measures  it  entirely 
by  the  past ;  the  latter,  because  it  has  not  yet  any  past. 


192  MEMORY  AND  IMAGINATION.  [CHAP. 

Lastly,  it  will  not  be  amiss  to  bear  in  mind,  in  regard  to  the 
organic  nature  of  memory,  that  we  cannot  remember  pain.  It  is 
certainly  possible  to  remember  that  we  have  suffered  a  particular 
pain ;  but  vividly  to  recall  the  pain  as  we  can  a  definite  idea 
is  not  possible.  And  why  ?  Because  the  idea  is  an  organized 
product  which  abides,  while  the  disorganization  or  disturbance 
of  nervous  element  which  pain  implies  passes  away  with  the 
restoration  of  the  integrity  of  the  nervous  centre.  For  the  same 
reason,  we  cannot  easily  or  adequately  recall  a  very  powerful 
emotion  in  which  the  idea  or  the  form  has  been  almost  entirely 
lost  in  the  commotion — where,  in  fact,  the  storm  among  the 
intimate  elements  has  been  so  great  as  to  be  destructive  of  form : 
Shakespeare's  words,  "formless  ruin  of  oblivion,"  admirably 
express  the  state  of  things.  When  we  do  strive  to  bring  to  mind 
a  particular  sensation  or  emotion,  it  is  by  vivid  representation 
of  its  cause,  and  consequent  secondary  excitation  of  it :  we 
remember  the  idea,  and  the  idea  generates  the  emotion  or  the 
sensation.  But  the  sensation  of  pain  is  a  very  different  matter 
from  the  sensation  of  one  of  the  senses;  it  is  the  outcry  of 
suffering  nervous  element,  and  cannot  be  generated  by  any  idea ; 
it  is  not  the  result  of  organization,  but  the  token  of  disorgani- 
zation. How,  then,  should  it  be  accurately  remembered  ? 


NOTES. 

1  (p.  18,3). — "  The  truth  that  memory  comes  into  existence  -when  the 
connexions  among  psychical  states  cease  to  be  perfectly  automatic  is  in 
complete  harmony  with  the  obverse  truth,  illustrated  in  all  our  expe- 
rience, that  as  fast  as  the  connexions  of  psychical  states  which  we  form 
in  memory  become,  by  constant  repetition,  automatic,  they  cease  to  be 
part  of  memory.  We  do  not  speak  of  ourselves  as  remembering  those 
relations  which  become  organically,  or  almost  organically,  registered  ; 
we  remember  those  relations  only  of  which  the  registration  is  not  yet 
absolute.  No  one  remembers  that  the  object  at  which  he  is  lookin" 
has  an  opposite  side  ;  or  that  a  certain  modification  of  the  visual 
impression  implies  a  certain  -distance ;  or  that  the  thing  which  he  sees 
moving  about  is  a  living  animal.  It  would  be  a  misuse  of  language 
were  we  to  ask  another  whether  lie  remembers  that  the  sun  shines, 
that  fire  burns,  that  iron  is  hard,  and  that  ice  is  cold And 


ix.]  MEMORY  AND  IMAGINATION. 

similarly,  though,  when  a  child,  the  reader's  knowledge  of  the  meaning 
of  successive  words  was  at  first  a  memory  of  the  meanings  he  had 
heard  given  to  them ;  yet  now  their  several  meanings  are  present  to 
him  without  any  such  mental  process  as  that  which  we  call  remem- 
brance."— Herbert  Spencer,  Principles  of  Psychology,  p.  551. 

2  (p.  186). — Jean  Paul  Eichter,  in  one  of  his  Letters,  says  : — "The 
dream  is  an  involuntary  art  of  poetry  :  and  it  shows  that  the  poet 
works  more  with  the  bodily  brain  than  another  man.  How  is  it  that 
no  one  has  wondered  that  in  the  detached  scenes  of  dreaming,  he  puts 
in  the  mouth  of  the  actors  the  most  appropriate  language,  the  words  most 
exactly  characteristic  of  their  nature ;  or  rather  that  they  prompt  him, 
not  he  them  1  The  true  poet  even  is  in  writing  only  the  listener,  not 

the  language-teacher  of  his  characters Victor's  observation  that 

the  opponent  of  his  dreams  often  put  before  him  more  difficult 
objections  than  a  real  bodily  one,  may  be  made  of  the  dramatist,  who 
can  in  no  manner  be  the  spokesman  of  his  company  without  a 
certain  inspiration,  though  he  is  at  the  same  time  easily  the  writer  of 
their  parts.  That  dream-forms  surprise  us  with  answers  with  which 
we  ourselves  have  inspired  them,  is  natural ;  even  when  awake  every 
idea  springs  forth  suddenly  like  a  spark  of  fire,  though  we  attribute  it 
to  our  attention;  but  in  dreams  we  lack  the  consciousness  of  attention, 
and  we  must  thus  ascribe  the  idea  to  the  figure  before  us,  to  which 
also  we  ascribe  the  attention."  Again  : — "  Das  Machtigste  in  Dichter, 
welches  seinen  "Werken  die  gute  und  die  hb'se  Seele  einblaset,  ist 
gerade  das  Unbewusste." — JEsthetik. 

Dr.  Brown  (Philosophy  of  the  Mind,  p.  200),  when  enumerating 
what  he  calls  the  Secondary  Laws  of  Suggestion,  lays  much  stress  on 
constitutional  differences  in  individuals — the  differences  of  Genius, 
Temper,  or  Disposition.  The  tendencies  in  some  minds  are  wholly  to 
suggestions  of  proximity ;  in  other  minds  tliere  is  a  powerful  tendency 
to  suggestions  of  analogy.  It  is  in  this  latter  tendency  to  the  new 
and  copious  suggestions  of  analogy  that  the  distinction  of  genius 
appears  to  consist ;  a  mind  in  which  it  exists  is  necessarily  inventive  ; 
"  for  all  to  which  we  give  the  name  of  invention,  having  a  relation  to 
something  old,  but  a  relation  to  that  which  was  never  before  suspected 
or  practically  applied,  is  the  suggestion  of  analogy."  There  would  be 
nothing  new  if  objects  were  to  suggest  only,  according  to  proximity, 
the  very  objects  that  had  co-existed  with  them;  "but  there  is  a 
perpetual  novelty  of  combination,  when  the  images  that  arise  after 
each  other,  by  that  shadowy  species  of  resemblance  which  we  are 
considering,  are  such  as  never  existed  before  together  or  in  immediate 
14 


194  MEMORY  AND  IMAGINATION.  [CHAP.  ix. 

succession."  Hence  the  rich  figurative  language  of  poetry — the 
expressions  of  resemblances  that  have  arisen  silently  and  spontaneously 
in  the  mind  ;  hence  the  discoveries  and  inventions  of  science,  &c. 
He  goes  on,  too,  to  point  out  that  this  novelty  of  combination  in 
imagination  cannot  depend  upon  the  will.  It  is  absurd,  he  says,  to 
suppose  that  we  can  will  directly  any  conception,  since,  if  we  know 
what  we  will,  conception  must  be  already  a  part  of  consciousness. 

"  Hence,  in  proportion  as  the  memory  is  enriched  and  provided 
with  materials,  in  the  same  proportion  the  rational  mind,  if  backed  by 
a  happy  genius,  will  be  able  skilfully,  felicitously,  and  approximately, 
and  agreeably  to  the  truth,  to  distribute  its  analyses  into  series,  to 
adjust  and  conclude  them,  of  many  analytic  conclusions  again  to  form 
new  analyses,  and  in  the  end  to  evolve  its  ultimate  analyses." — 
Swedenborg's  Animal  Kingdom,  vol.  ii.  p.  348. 

In  a  note  he  adds — "  This  is  corroborated  by  the  common  opinion, 
that  the  knowledge  and  intelligence  of  an  individual  are  in  proportion 
to  the  furniture  of  his  memory.  But  it  does  not  follow  from  this, 
that  a  powerful  memory  is  always  accompanied  with  ability,  or  by  an 
understanding  of  equal  grasp.  For  the  faculty  of  reducing  the  con- 
tents of  memory  to  order  is  a  fresh  intellectual  reo[uisite.  An  edifice 
is  not  built  simply  by  the  accumulation  of  implements,  bricks,  tiles, 
and  the  materials.  These  and  skill  must  be  tasked  to  put  all  thingp 
together  in  their  places. " 


PAET  II. 
THE    PATHOLOGY    OF    MIND 

CHAPTER  I.  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY. 

„  II.  ON  THE  INSANITY  OF  EAELY  LIKE. 

„  III.  ON  THE  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY. 

„  IV.  ON  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY. 

.,  V.  ON  THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  INSANITY. 

„  VI.  ON  THE  PROGNOSIS  OF  INSANITY. 

.,  VII.  ON  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY. 


CHAPTER  I. 

ON  THE  CALSES  OF  INSANITY. 

THE  causes  of  insanity,  as  usually  enumerated  by  authors,  are 
so  general  and  vague  as  to  render  it  a  very  difficult  matter 
to  settle  in  the  mind  what  they  really  are.  But  it  is  hardly  less 
difficult,  when  brought  face  to  face  with  an  actual  case  of 
insanity,  and  when  there  is  every  opportunity  of  investigation, 
to  determine  with  certainty  what  have  been  the  causes  of  the 
disease.  The  uncertainty  springs  from  the  fact  that,  in  the  great 
majority  of  cases,  there  is  a  concurrence  of  conditions,  not  one 
single  effective  cause.  All  the  conditions  which  conspire  to  the 
production  of  an  effect  are  alike  causes,  alike  agents ;  and,  there- 
fore, all  the  conditions,  whether  they  are  in  the  individual  or  in 
the  circumstances  in  which  he  is  placed,  which  in  a  given  case 
co-operate  in  the  production  of  disease,  must  alike  be  regarded 
as  causes.  When  we  are  told  that  a  man  has  become  deranged 
from  anxiety  or  grief,  we  have  learned  very  little  if  we  rest  con- 
tent with  that.  How  does  it  happen  that  another  man,  sub- 
jected to  an  exactly  similar  cause  of  grief,  does  not  go  mad  ?  It 
is  certain  that  the  entire  causes  cannot  be  the  same  where  the 
effects  are  so  different ;  and  what  we  want  to  have  laid  bare  is 
the  conspiracy  of  conditions,  internal  and  external,  by  which 
a  mental  shock,  inoperative  in  one  case,  has  had  such  serious 
consequences  in  another.  A  complete  biographical  account  of 
the  individual,  not  neglecting  the  consideration  of  his  hereditary 
antecedents,  would  alone  suffice  to  set  forth  distinctly  the  causa- 
tion of  his  insanity.  If  all  the  circumstances,  internal  and 
external,  were  duly  scanned  and  weighed,  it  would  be  found  that 
there  is  no  accident  in  madness ;  the  disease,  whatever  form  it 
might  take,  by  whatsoever  complex  concurrence  of  conditions,  or 


198  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

by  how  many  successive  links  of  causation,  it  might  be  gene- 
rated, would  be  traceable  as  the  inevitable  consequence  of  certain 
antecedents,  as  plainly  as  the  explosion  of  gunpowder  may  be 
traced  to  its  causes,  whether  the  train  of  events  of  which  it  is 
the  issue  be  long  or  short.  The  germs  of  insanity  are  sometimes 
latent  in  the  foundations  of  the  character,  and  the  final  outbreak 
is  perhaps  the  explosion  of  a  long  train  of  antecedent  prepa- 
rations. 

When  the  causation  of  insanity  may  thus  extend  over  a  life- 
time, it  is  easy  to  perceive  how  little  is  taught  by  specifying  a 
single  moral  cause,  such  as  grief,  vanity,  ambition,  which  may 
after  all  be,  and  often  is,  one  of  the  earliest  symptoms  of  the 
disease.  Do  we  not,  in  sober  truth,  learn  more  of  its  real  causa- 
tion from  a  tragedy  like  "  Lear  "  than  from  all  that  has  yet  been 
written  thereupon  in  the  guise  of  science?  An  artist  like 
Shakespeare,  penetrating  with  subtle  insight  the  character  of  the 
individual,  and  the  relations  between  him  and  his  circumstances, 
discerning  the  order  which  there  is  amidst  so  much  apparent 
disorder,  and  revealing  the  necessary  mode  of  the  evolution 
of  the  events  of  life,  furnishes,  in  the  work  of  his  creative 
art,  more  valuable  information  than  can  be  obtained  from  the 
vague  and  general  statements  with  which  science,  in  its  present 
defective  state,  is  constrained  to  content  itself.  Because  of  these 
difficulties,  I  believe  that  I  shall  help  to  accomplish  my  task 
of  conveying  distinct  notions  of  the  causation  of  insanity  by 
bringing  forward  in  an  appendix,  as  illustrations,  cases,  the 
histories  of  which  I  have  thoroughly  investigated.  Before  doing 
this,  however,  it  is  necessary  to  make  some  general  observations 
in  order  to  establish  certain  principles,  and  to  prevent  repetition 
afterwards. 

It  is  the  custom  to  treat  of  the  causes  of  insanity  as  physical 
and  moral,  though  it  is  not  possible  thus  to  discriminate  them 
with  exactness.  Where  hereditary  taint  exists,  for  example,  and 
is  the  cause  of  some  defect  or  peculiarity  of  character  which 
ultimately  issues  in  insanity,  one  person  might  describe  the 
cause  as  moral  while  another  would  describe  it  as  physical. 
Certainly,  where  there  existed  manifest  defective  development 
of  the  brain  in  consequence  of  inherited  mischief,  as  in  some 
cases  of  idiocy,  every  one  would  agree  as  to  its  physical  nature ; 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  199 

but  where  there  was  no  observable  morbid  condition  in  the 
brain,  and  the  evil  only  declared  itself  in  a  vice  of  disposition  in 
the  individual,  most  people  would  consider  it  of  a  moral  nature, 
though  really  as  certainly  due  to  physical  conditions  as  idiocy 
confessedly  is.  In  reality,  every  moral  cause  operates  through 
the  physical  changes  which  it  produces,  and  in  the  great  majority 
of  cases  in  which  the  cause  has  been  pronounced  moral  there 
has  been  something  in  the  physical  constitution  by  the  co-ope- 
ration of  which  the  result  has  been  brought  about.  Life  in  all 
its  forms,  physical  or  mental,  morbid  or  healthy,  is  a  relation ; 
its  phenomena  result  from  the  reciprocal  action  of  an  individual 
organism  and  external  forces :  health,  as  the  consequence  and 
evidence  of  a  successful  adaptation  to  the  conditions  of  exist- 
ence, implies  the  preservation,  well-being,  and  development  of 
the  organism,  while  disease  marks  a  failure  in  organic  adaptation 
to  external  conditions,  and  leads,  therefore,  to  disorder,  decay, 
and  death.  Now  it  is  obvious  that  the  harmonious  relation 
between  the  organism  and  the  external  world,  which  is  the  con- 
dition of  health,  may  be  disturbed  either  by  a  cause  in  the 
organism,  or  by  a  cause  in  the  external  circumstances,  or  by  a 
cause,  or  rather  a  concurrence  of  causes,  arising  partly  from  one 
and  partly  from  the  other.  "When  it  is  said  that  mental  anxiety, 
produced  by  adverse  circumstances,  has  made  any  one  mad, 
there  is  implied  commonly  some  inherent  infirmity  of  nervous 
element  which  has  co-operated  :  were  the  nervous  system  in  a 
state  of  perfect  soundness,  and  in  possession  of  that  reserve 
power  which  it  then  has  of  adapting  itself,  within  certain  limits, 
to  the  varying  external  conditions,  it  is  probable  that  the  most 
unfavourable  circumstances  would  not  be  sufficient  to  disturb 
permanently  the  relation,  and  to  initiate  mental  disease.  But 
when  unfavourable  action  from  without  conspires  with  an 
infirmity  of  nature  within,  then  the  conditions  of  disorder  are 
established,  and  a  discord,  or  madmau,  is  produced. 

From  what  has  been  said,  it  would  seem  that  it  cannot  con- 
duce to  exact  knowledge  to  maintain  the  violent  distinction 
between  physical  and  moral  causes  of  insanity.  This  will  appear 
more  plainly  if  we  call  to  mind  the  conclusions  established  in 
the  First  Part  of  this  book.  There  it  was  distinctly  shown  that 
thoughts,  feelings,  and  actions  leave  behind  them  certain  residua 


200  ON  TI1Z  CAUSES  OF  INSAKITT.  [CHAP. 

which  become  organized  in  the  nervous  centres,  and  thenceforth 
modify  the  manner  of  their  development,  or  constitute  their 
acquired  nature ;  consequently,  the  moral  manifestations  through- 
out life  inevitably  determine  physical  organization  ;  and  a  slowly 
operating  moral  cause  of  insanity  is  all  the  while  producing 
physical  changes  in  the  occult  recesses  of  the  supreme  nervous 
centres  of  the  mental  life.  When  insanity  occurs  as  the  con- 
summate exaggeration  of  a  particular  vice  of  character,  as  it 
sometimes  does,  the  morbid  mental  manifestations  mark  an 
internal  definite  morbid  action  in  the  supreme  nervous  centres, 
— a  gradually  effected  modification  of  the  mental  organization. 

I  shall  deal  first  with  the  consideration  of  those  general  con- 
ditions which  are  thought  to  predispose  in  any  way  to  insanity, 
and  which  may  be  summed  up  as  its  remote  or  predisposing 
causes. 

Predisposing  Causes. — There  are  general  causes,  such  as  the 
state  of  civilization  in  a  country,  the  form  of  its  government  and 
its  religion,  the  occupation,  habits,  and  condition  of  its  inhabi- 
tants, which  are  not  without  influence  in  determining  the  pro- 
portion of  mental  diseases  amongst  them.  Reliable  statistical 
data  respecting  the  prevalence  of  insanity  in  different  countries 
are  not  yet  to  be  had,  and  even  the  question  whether  it  has 
increased  with  the  progress  of  civilization  has  not  been  posi- 
tively settled.  Travellers  are  certainly  agreed  that  it  is  a  rare 
disease  amongst  barbarous  people,  while,  in  the  different  civi- 
lized nations  of  the  world,  there  is,  so  far  as  can  be  ascertained, 
an  average  of  about  one  insane  person  in  five  hundred  inhabi- 
tants. Theoretical  considerations  would  lead  to  the  expectation 
of  an  increased  liability  to  mental  disorder  with  an  increase  in 
the  complexity  of  the  mental  organization  :  as  there  is  a  greater 
liability  to  disease,  and  the  possibility  of  many  more  diseases,  in 
a  complex  organism  like  the  human  body,  where  there  are  many 
kinds  of  tissues  and  an  orderly  subordination  of  parts,  than  in  a 
simple  organism  with  less  differentiation  of  tissue  and  less  com- 
plexity of  structure;  so  in  the  complex  mental  organization, 
with  its  manifold,  special,  and  complex  relations  with  the  ex- 
ternal, which  a  state  of  civilization  implies,  there  is  plainly  the 
favourable  occasion  of  many  derangements.  The  feverish  activity 
of  life,  the  eager  interests,  the  numerous  passions,  and  the  great 


L]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  201 

strain  of  mental  work  incident  to  the  multiplied  industries  and 
eager  competition  of  an  active  civilization,  can  scarcely  fail,  one 
may  suppose,  to  augment  the  liability  to  mental  disease.  There 
seems,  therefore,  good  reason  to  believe  that,  with  the  progress  of 
mental  development  through  the  ages,  there  is,  as  is  the  case 
with  other  forms  of  organic  development,  a  correlative  degene- 
ration going  on,  and  that  an  increase  of  insanity  is  a  penalty 
which  an  increase  of  our  present  civilization  necessarily  pays. 

So  far  as  facts  are  available  in  the  determination  of  this 
question,  they  confirm  the  foregoing  theoretical  considerations. 
The  sort  of  insanity  most  common  amongst  savages  is  imbecility, 
or  idiocy,  for  the  same  reason  that  idiocy  is  the  most  common 
form  of  insanity  in  children :  where  the  mind  is  not  developed, 
varied  degeneration  of  it  cannot  take  place,  though  it  may 
obviously  remain  morbidly  arrested.  It  is  plainly  impossible, 
for  example,  that  the  most  typical  moral  insanity  should  occur 
where  no  moral  development  has  taken  place  ;  before  the  native 
Australian  savage — who  has  not  in  his  language  any  words  for 
vice  or  justice,  nor  in  his  mind  any  such  ideas  as  these  words 
convey  to  an  intelligent  European — could  become  morally  insane, 
he  must  first  be  humanized  and  then  civilized;  development 
must  precede  retrograde  metamorphosis,  mental  organization 
precede  mental  disorganization.  Another  fact  which  deserves 
serious  consideration  is,  that  there  has  undoubtedly  been  a  very 
large  increase  of  late  years  in  the  number  of  the  insane  who  have 
come  under  care  and  observation.  The  reports  of  the  Lunacy 
Commissioners  show  that,  on  the  1st  of  January,  1849,  there  were 
14,560  patients  in  the  hospitals,  asylums,  and  licensed  houses  of 
England  and  Wales;  that  six  years  afterwards,  on  the  1st  of  Janu- 
ary, 1855,  there  were  20,493  insane  ;  that  ten  years  afterwards,  on 
the  1st  of  January,  1865,  there  were  29,425  insane  under  certifi- 
cates ;  and  that  on  the  1st  of  January,  1866,  the  number  had 
risen  to  30,869.  Now  it  is  certain  that  this  large  increase  is  not 
to  be  attributed  to  an  increase  of  insanity  in  the  population ;  it 
is  undoubtedly  mainly  owing  (1)  to  the  large  number  of  cases, 
formerly  unreported,  which  more  stringent  legislation  has  brought 
under  observation ;  (2)  to  the  larger  number  of  insane,  especially 
of  paupers,  who  are  now  sent  to  asylums  ;  and  (3)  to  the  pro- 
longation of  life  in  those  who  have  been  brought  under  proper 


202  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP, 

care.  In  fact,  it  might  be  said  roughly,  that  the  greater  part 
of  this  large  increase  in  the  insane  population  of  England  and 
Wales  is  due  to  the  facts  that  nowadays  more  people  are  thought 
and  declared  mad  than  would  formerly  have  "been  thought  so  ; 
that  more  persons  are  admitted  into  asylums,  where  they  live 
longer ;  and  that  fewer  persons  are  discharged,  either  by  death 
or  by  being  thought  to  have  recovered,  than  formerly.  But,  when 
all  due  allowance  has  been  made  for  these  causes,  it  must  be 
admitted  that  a  steady  increase  of  about  1,000  a  year  in  the 
insane  population  of  England  and  Wales  for  the  last  seventeen 
years,  does  seem  to  point  to  an  actual  increase  in  the  production 
of  insanity,  and  even  to  an  increase  more  than  proportionate  to 
an  increasing  sane  population. 

If  we  admit  such  an  increase  of  insanity  with  our  present 
civilization,  we  shall  be  at  no  loss  to  indicate  causes  for  it.  Some 
would  no  doubt  easily  find  in  over-population  the  prolific  parent 
of  this  as  of  numerous  other  ills  to  mankind.  In  the  fierce 
and  active  struggle  for  existence  which  there  necessarily  is 
where  the  claimants  are  many  and  the  supplies  are  limited,  the 
weakest  must  suffer,  and  some  of  them  break  down  into  mad- 
ness. As  it  is  the  distinctly  manifested  aim  of  mental  develop- 
ment to  bring  man  into  more  intimate,  special,  and  complex 
relations  with  the  rest  of  nature  by  means  of  patient  investi- 
gations of  physical  laws,  and  a  corresponding  internal  adapta- 
tion to  external  relations,  it  is  no  marvel,  it  appears  indeed 
inevitable,  that  those  who,  either  from  inherited  weakness  or 
some  other  debilitating  causes,  have  been  rendered  unequal  to 
the  struggle  of  life  should  be  ruthlessly  crushed  out  as  abortive 
beings  in  nature.  They  are  the  waste  thrown  up  by  the  silent 
but  strong  current  of  progress ;  they  are  the  weak  crushed  out 
by  the  strong  in  the  mortal  struggle  for  development ;  they  are 
examples  of  decaying  reason  thrown  off  by  vigorous  mental 
growth,  the  energy  of  which  they  testify.  Everywhere  and 
always  "  to  be  weak  is  to  be  miserable." 

If  we  want  a  striking  illustration  of  the  operation  of  this 
hard  law,  we  may  see  it  in  the  appropriation  by  man,  the 
stronger  sex,  of  all  the>  means  of  subsistence  by  labour,  to  the 
almost  entire  exclusion  of  women,  the  feebler  sex.  Because, 
however,  women  are  necessary  to  the  gratification  of  man's 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY  203 

passions,  indispensable  to  the  comfort  of  his  life,  they  are  not 
crushed  out  of  existence,  they  are  only  kept  in  a  state  of  sub- 
jection and  dependence.  The  woman  who  can  find  no  opening 
for  her  -honourable  energies  in  the  present  social  system,  is  yet 
willingly  permitted  to  gain  a  precarious  livelihood  by  selling 
the  charms  of  her  person  to  gratify  the  lusts  of  her  lord  and 
master.  Under  the  institution  of  marriage  she  has  the  position 
of  a  subordinate,  herself  debarred  from  the  noble  aims  and 
activities  of  life,  and  ministering,  in  a  silent  manner,  to  the 
comfort  and  greatness  of  him  who  appropriates  the  labour  and 
enjoys  the  rewards.  Practically,  then,  woman  has  no  honourable 
outlook  but  marriage  in  our  present  social  system  :  if  that  aim 
is  missed,  all  else  is  missed.  Through  generations  her  character 
has  been  formed  with  that  chief  aim ;  it  has  been  made  feeble 
by  long  habit  of  dependence  ;  by  the  circumstances  of  her 
position  the  sexual  life  has  been  undesignedly  developed  at  the 
expense  of  the  intellectual.  Now,  therefore,  when  the  luxuries 
thought  necessary  in  social  life  are  so  many  and  costly  that 
marriage  is  much  avoided  by  men,  there  is  a  cruel  stress  laid 
upon  many  a  gentle  nature.  In  this  disappointment  of  their 
life-aim,  and  the  long  train  of  consequences,  physical  and 
moral,  which  it  unconsciously  draws  after  it,  there  is,  I  believe, 
a  fertile  source  of  insanity  among  women.  It  is  not  only  that 
women  of  the  better  classes,  not  married,  have  no  aim  in  life  to 
work  for,  no  opening  for  the  employment  of  their  energies  in 
outward  activities,  and  are  driven  to  a  morbid  self-brooding,  or 
to  an  excessive  religious  devotion  or  a  religious  enthusiasm 
which  is  too  often  the  unwitting  cloak  of  an  exaggerated  and 
unhealthy  self-feeling ;  but,  through  the  character  produced  by 
the  position  which  they  have  so  long  held  in  the  social  system, 
their  organic  life  is  little  able  to  withstand  the  consequences  of 
an  unsatisfied  sexual  instinct.  Disturbances  of  all  sorts  ensue, 
and  social  customs  debar  them  from  the  means  of  relief  which  men 
have  both  in  active  employment  and  in  unmarried  sexual  indul- 
gence. Masturbation  is  undoubtedly  sometimes  provoked,  and 
aggravates  the  evil  for  which  it  was  sought  as  a  relief.  Let  it 
not  be  supposed,  however,  that  all  these  things  take  place  con- 
sciously in  the  woman's  thoughts,  feelings,  and  actions :  the 
sexual  passion  is  one  of  the  strongest  passions  in  nature,  and 


204  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

as  soon  as  it  conies  into  activity,  it  declares  its  influence  on 
every  pulse  of  the  organic  life,  revolutionizing  the  entire  nature, 
conscious  and  unconscious ;  when,  therefore,  the  means  of  its 
gratification  entirely  fail,  and  when  there  is  no  vicarious  outlet 
for  its  energy,  the  whole  system  feels  the  effects,  and  exhibits 
them  in  restlessness  and  irritability,  in  a  morbid  self-feeling 
taking  a  variety  of  forms,  and  in  an  act  of  self-abuse  which  on 
the  first  occasion  may,  I  believe,  be  a  sort  of  instinctive  frenzy, 
of  the  aim  of  which  there  is  only  the  vaguest  and  most  dim 
notion. 

Another  way  in  which  over-population  leads  to  deterioration 
of  the  health  of  a  community  is  by  the  overcrowding  and  the 
insanitary  condition  of  dwelling-houses  which  it  occasions  in 
towns.  Not  fevers  only,  but  scrofula,  perhaps  phthisis,  and 
certainly  general  deterioration  of  nutrition,  are  thus  generated 
and  transmitted  as  evil  heritages  to  future  generations  :  the 
acquired  ill  of  the  parent  becomes  the  inborn  infirmity  of  the 
offspring.  It  is  not  that  the  child  necessarily  inherits  the  parti- 
cular disease  of  the  parent,  for  diseases  unquestionably  undergo 
transformation  through  generations  ;  but  it  does  often  inherit 
a  constitution  in  which  there  is  a  certain  inherent  aptitude  to 
some  kind  of  morbid  degeneration,  or  a  constitution  destitute  of 
that  reserve  power  necessary  to  meet  the  trying  occasions  of 
life.  Lugol  found  insanity  to  be  by  no  means  rare  amongst 
the  parents  of  the  scrofulous  and  tuberculous ;  and  in  one 
chapter  of  his  work  on  Scrofula  treats  of  hereditary  scrofula 
from  paralytic,  epileptic,  and  insane  parents.  Schroeder  van 
der  Kolk  was  also  of  opinion  that  a  hereditary  predisposition  to 
phthisis  might  develop  into  or  predispose  to  insanity ;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  insanity  predisposed  to  phthisis.  It  is 
certain  that  there  are  very  intimate  relations  between  phthisis 
and  insanity  :  one-fourth  of  the  deaths  in  asylums  are  caused 
by  phthisis ;  and  Dr.  Clouston,  who  found  that  there  is  hereditary 
predisposition  in  7  per  cent,  more  of  the  cases  of  insanity  with 
tubercle  than  of  the  insane  generally,  has  described  a  certain 
form  of  insanity  as  phthisical  insanity.  Watching  the  decay 
of  a  family,  it  is  often  seen  that  phthisis  and  insanity  are  of 
frequent  occurrence  amongst  its  members  ;  and  when  extinction 
of  it  occurs,  when  the  last  of  the  family  dies,  he  not  seldom  dies 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  205 

insane  or  phthisical  or  both.  "When  we  reflect  that  a  disease  is 
not  a  specific  morbid  entity  that,  like  some  evil  spirit,  has  taken 
mischievous  possession  of  the  body,  or  of  a  particular  part  of  it, 
but  a  condition  of  more  or  less  degeneration  from  healthy  life 
in  an  organism  whose  different  parts  constitute  one  harmonious 
whole,  it  will  be  sufficiently  evident  that  a  disease  of  one  part 
of  the  organism  will  not  only  affect  the  whole  sympathetically 
at  the  time,  but  may  lead  to  a  more  general  infirmity  in  the 
next  generation — to  an  organic  infirmity  which  shall  be  deter- 
mined in  its  special  morbid  manifestations  according  to  the 
external  conditions  of  life. 

Perhaps  one,  and  certainly  not  the  least,  of  the  ill  effects 
which  come  from  some  of  the  conditions  of  our  present  civili- 
zation is  seen  in  the  general  dread  and  disdain  of  poverty,  in 
the  eager  passion  to  become  rich.  The  practical  gospel  of  the 
age,  testified  everywhere  by  faith  and  works,  is  that  of  money- 
getting  ;  men  are  estimated  mainly  by  the  amount  of  their 
wealth,  take  social  rank  accordingly,  and  consequently  bend  all 
their  energies  to  acquire  that  which  gains  them  esteem  and 
influence.  The  result  is  that  in  the  higher  departments  of  trade 
and  commerce  speculations  of  all  sorts  are  eagerly  entered  on, 
and  that  many  people  are  kept  in  a  continued  state  of  excite- 
ment and  anxiety  by  the  fluctuations  of  the  money  market.  In 
the  lower  branches  of  trade  there  is  the  same  eager  desire  for 
petty  gains  ;  and  the  continued  absorption  of  the  mind  in  these 
small  acquisitions  generates  a  littleness  of  mind  and  meanness 
of  spirit,  where  it  does  not  lead  to  actual  dishonesty,  which 
are  nowhere  displayed  in  a  more  pitiable  form  than  in  certain 
petty  tradesmen.  The  occupation  which  a  man  is  entirely  en- 
gaged in  does  not  fail  to  modify  his  character,  and  the  reaction 
upon  the  individual's  nature  of  a  life  which  is  being  spent  with 
the  sole  aim  of  becoming  rich,  is  most  baneful.  It  is  not  that 
the  fluctuations  of  excitement  unhinge  the  merchant's  mind  and 
lead  to  maniacal  outbreaks,  although  that  does  sometimes 
happen ;  it  is  not  that  failure  in  the  paroxysm  of  some  crisis 
prostrates  his  energies  and  makes  him  melancholic,  although 
that  also  is  occasionally  witnessed;  but  it  is  that  the  exclu- 
siveness  of  his  life-aim  and  occupation  too  often  saps  the  moral 
or  altruistic  element  in  his  nature,  makes  him  become  egoistic 


206  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

formal,  and  unsympathetic,  and  in  his  person  deteriorates  the 
nature  of  humanity.  "What  is  the  result  ?  If  one  conviction  has 
been  fixed  in  my  mind  more  distinctly  than  another  by  observa- 
tion of  instances,  it  is  that  it  is  extremely  unlikely  such  a  man 
will  beget  healthy  children ;  that,  in  fact,  it  is  extremely  likely 
that  the  deterioration  of  nature,  which  he  has  acquired,  will  be 
transmitted  as  an  evil  heritage  to  his  children.  In  several 
instances  in  which  the  father  has  toiled  upwards  from  poverty 
to  vast  wealth,  with  the  aim  and  hope  of  founding  a  family,  I 
have  witnessed  the  results  in  a  degeneracy,  mental  and  physical, 
of  his  offspring,  which  has  sometimes  gone  as  far  as  extinction 
of  the  family  in  the  third  or  fourth  generation.  When  the  evil 
is  not  so  extreme  as  madness  or  ruinous  vice,  the  savour  of 
a  mother's  influence  perhaps  having  been  present,  it  may  still 
be  manifest  in  an  instinctive  cunning  and  duplicity,  and  an 
extreme  selfishness  of  nature — a  nature  not  having  the  capacity 
of  a  true  moral  conception  or  altruistic  feeling.  "Whatever 
opinion  other  more  experienced  observers  may  hold,  I.  cannot 
but  think,  after  what  I  have  seen,  that  the  extreme  passion  for 
getting  rich,  absorbing  the  whole  energies  of  a  life,  does  pre- 
dispose to  mental  degeneration  in  the  offspring — either  to  moral 
defect,  or  to  moral  and  intellectual  deficiency,  or  to  outbreaks  of 
positive  insanity  under  the  conditions  of  life. 

"Without  going  on  to  enumerate  other  causes  which  arise  out 
of  our  present  civilization,  and  appear  to  favour  the  increase  of 
insanity,  it  will  be  sufficient  to  say  'that  any  condition  that  is 
injurious  to  mental  or  bodily  health,  though  it  does  not  produce 
insanity  directly,  may  so  far  predispose  to  it  in  the  next  gene- 
ration— determining  in  the  present  what  shall  be  predetermined 
in  the  future.  But  while  giving  due  weight  to  this  consideration, 
it  is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  that  an  increase  in  the  number  of 
insane  persons  in  a  country  does  not  mean  the  degeneracy  of  the 
people  :  the  capability  of  development  is  the  capability  of  dege- 
neration, and  where  the  general  progress  is  going  on  actively  the 
retrograde  action  in  the  elements  must  be  going  on  also :  the 
particular  is  sacrificed  to  the  general,  "  the  individual  perishes, 
but  the  race  is  more  and  more."  If  this  be  so,  may  we  not  then 
say  that  an  increase  of  insanity  is  after  all  a  testimony  of  deve- 
lopment, that  a  great  apparent  evil  is  but  a  phase  in  the  working 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  207 

out  of  good  ;  may  we  not,  indeed,  ask  with  the  prophet,  "  Shall 
there  be  evil  in  the  city,  and  the  Lord  have  not  done  it "  ? 

Sex. — Esquirol  and  Haslam  thought  insanity  to  be  of  more 
frequent  occurrence  among  women  than  men,  but  authors  are 
now  generally  agreed  that  the  converse  is  true.    Dr.  Thurnain 
affirms  men  to  be  more  liable  to  mental  disorder  than  women ; 
and  Dr.  Jarvis  came  to  the  same  conclusion  from  an  exami- 
nation of  the  statistics  of  different  countries.     Eecently  it  has 
been  said  that  the  female  sex  is  more  liable  to  suffer  from  here- 
ditary insanity.     If  my  experience  were  large  enough  to  be  of 
any  value,  it  would  give  the  preponderance  to  the  women :  of 
106  persons  whom   I  admitted  into  a  lunatic  hospital,  there 
were  50  men  and  66  women.     This  result  agrees  closely  with 
the  statistics  of  the  number  of  people  confined  in  asylums  in 
England  and  "Wales  :  on  the  1st  of  January,  1855,  there  were  in 
the  hospitals,  asylums,  and  licensed  houses  10,885  females  and 
9,608  males,  and  on  the  1st  of  January,  1866,  15,437  females 
and  13,988  males — the  numbers  giving  a  preponderance  of  from 
about  five  to  six  per  cent,  to  women.*      On  whichever  side, 
male  or  female,  the  uncertain  difference  lies,  it  is  probably  incon- 
siderable.    There  is  scarcely  sufficient  ground  to  maintain  that 
there  is  by  simple  reason  of  sex  any  inborn  liability  to  insanity. 
The  female  sex  is  certainly  the  weaker,  and  on  tliis  account  will 
be  more  likely  to  suffer  from  the  adverse  circumstances  of  life, 
especially  in  a  complex  social  state  where  it  is  precluded  so 
much  from  active  work,  has  so  few  resources,  and  is  enfeebled  by 
dependence  ;  it  has  moreover  conditions  which  in  some  regard 
favour  disturbance  in  the  revolutions  effected  in  the  system  at 
puberty,  during  pregnancy,  by  the  puerperal  state,  and  at  the 
climacteric  period.     These  conditions,  in  concurrence  with  the 
circumstances  of  female  life,  may  possibly  become  the  cause  of 
more  frequent  insanity  amongst  women ;  and  one  is  the  more 
apt  to  think  so  when   one  calls  to  mind  that  causes  which 
undoubtedly  act  more  frequently  amongst  men — intemperance 
and  other  excess,  for  example — do  not  avail  to  notably  increase 
the  proportion  of  insanity  amongst  them.      On  the  whole  I 

*  It  must  he  remembered,  however,  that  the  proportion  of  women  in  the 
population  slightly  exceeds  that  of  men,  and  that  general  paralysis,  which  ia 
particularly  fatal,  is  almost  confined  to  men. 


208  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

should  be  disposed  to  hold  that,  while  the  number  of  men  and 
of  women  who  become  insane  appears  to  differ  but  little,  as  the 
causes  actually  operate,  there  is  in  woman,  by  virtue  of  her  sex, 
a  slightly  greater  predisposition  to  insanity  than  in  man. 

Education. — Next  to  the  inherited  nature  which  every  one 
has,  the  acquired  nature  which  he  owes  to  the  circumstances  of 
his  education  and  training  is  most  important  in  determining  the 
character.  I  mean,  not  the  education  which  is  called  learning 
alone,  but  that  education  of  the  nature  of  the  individual,  that 
development  of  the  character,  which  the  circumstances  of  his 
life  have  determined.  There  are  in  every  nature  its  particular 
tendencies  or  impulses  of  development  which  may  be  fostered  or 
checked  by  the  conditions  of  life ;  and  which,  therefore,  according 
to  their  good  or  evil  nature,  and  the  external  influences  which 
they  meet  with,  may  minister  to  the  future  weal  or  woe  of  the 
individual — may  lead  to  a  stability  of  character  which  prevents 
the  mental  equilibrium  ever  being  seriously  disturbed,  or  to  such 
an  instability  of  character  that  the  smallest  adversity  may  destroy 
it  for  ever.  How  often  one  is  condemned  to  .see,  with  pain  and 
sorrow,  an  injudicious  education  sorely  aggravate  an  inherent 
mischief!  The  parent  not  only  transmits  a  taint  or  vice  of 
nature  to  the  child,  but  fosters  its  evil  growth  by  the  influence 
of  a  bad  example,  and  by  a  foolish  training  at  the  time  when 
the  young  mind  is  very  susceptible,  and  when  the  direction  given 
to  its  development  is  sometimes  decisive  for  life.  Where  there 
is  no  innate  taint,  evil  may  still  be  wrought  by  enforcing  an 
unnatural  precocity,  wherein  is  often  planted  the  germ  of  future 
disease.  Parental  harshness  and  neglect — repressing  the  child's 
feelings,  stifling  its  need  of  love,  and  driving  it  to  a  morbid  self- 
brooding,  or  to  take  refuge  in  a  world  of  vague  fancies — is  not 
less  pernicious  than  a  foolish  indulgence  through  which  it  never 
learns  the  necessary  lessons  of  renunciation  and  self-control. 
The  aim  of  a  good  education  should  be  to  develop  the  power 
and  habit  of  what  the  events  of  life  will  not  fail  to  rudely 
enforce — renunciation  and  self-control,  and  to  lead  to  the  con- 
tinued transference  of  thoughts  and  feelings  into  external  actions 
of  a  beneficial  kind.  By  the  habitual  encouragement  of  self- 
feeling,  and  by  an  egoistic  development  in  all  the  relations  of 
life,  a  character  may,  by  imperceptible  degrees,  be  so  framed 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  'J()0 

that  insanity  is  the  natural  and  consummate  evolution  of  it, 
while  every  step  taken  in  such  deterioration  will  so  far  pre- 
dispose to  insanity  under  adverse  circumstances  of  life. 

-  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out  how  ill  adapted  the  present 
system  of  female  education  is  to  store  the  mind  with  useful 
knowledge,  and  to  train  up  a  strong  character.  It  is  peculiarly 
fitted  for  the  frivolous  purposes  of  female  life  ;  but  that  it  is  so 
is  its  greatest  condemnation.  As  the  education  of  women  is 
widened,  deepened,  and  improved,  other  and  better  resources  will 
be  discovered  and  earnestly  used,  and  the  reaction  of  a  higher 
mode  of  life  on  female  education  and  female  nature  cannot  fail 
to  be  most  beneficial. 

Religion. — I  have  said  that  the  practical  religion  of  the  day,  the 
real  guiding  gospel  of  life,  is  money-getting :  the  professed  religion 
is  Christianity.  Now,  without  asserting  that  riches  are  not  to  be 
gotten  by  honest  industry,  it  may  be  maintained  that  the  eager 
passion  to  get  rich — honestly,  it  may  be  ;  but,  if  not,  still  to  get 
rich— is  often  inconsistent  with  the  spirit  of  the  gospel  professed. 
The  too  frequent  consequence  is,  that  life  becomes  a  systematic 
inconsistency,  or  an  organized  hypocrisy.  With  a  profession  of 
faith  that  angels  might  adopt,  there  is  too  often  a  rule  of  practice 
which  devils  need  not  disdain.  I  do  not  speak  here  of  those 
whose  religion  is  a  mere  social  observance,  which  it  beseems  a 
man  of  respectability  willing  to  stand  well  with  his  neighbours 
to  conform  to.  Such  persons  will,  in  all  probability,  belong  to 
the  Church  of  England,  which  is  eminently  the  religion  of 
success  in  life  and  of  a  respectable  social  position  :  it  does  not 
demand  any  exhibition  of  zealous  earnestness  from,  nor  does 
it  impose  any  galling  yoke  upon,  its  members;  it  desires  to 
avoid  anything  that  is  extreme,  and  insists  only  on  the  main- 
tenance of  the  social  proprieties :  it  is  the  established  religion, 
and,  in  close  alliance  with  the  governing  classes,  it  aims  at  the 
preservation  of  the  established  state  of  things.  But  it  may  be 
questioned  whether  the  Church  of  England  really  reaches  the 
poor  and  struggling,  those  who  truly  need  a  gospel  of  life.  Those 
of  them  who  have  any  religion  at  all  belong,  for  the  most  part, 
to  two  religious  bodies  into  which  the  two  extreme  parties  in 
the  English  Church  insensibly  merge — to  Eoman  Catholicism 
and  Methodism.  When,  therefore,  we  have  to  consider  a  religion 
15 


210  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY,  [CHAP. 

really  influencing  life,  when  we  have  to  weigh  its  effect  on  cha- 
racter as  predisposing  or  not  to  insanity,  we  have  practically  to 
deal  with  Eoman  Catholicism,  actual  or  abortive,  or  with  Dissent 
in  some  of  its  forms.  I  do  not  hesitate  to  express  a  conviction 
that  the  excitement  of  religious  feelings,  and  the  moroseness  of 
the  religious  life,  favoured  by  some  of  the  Dissenters,  are 
habitually  injurious  to  the  character,  and  are  sometimes  a  direct 
cause  of  insanity.  Young  women  \vho  fail  to  get  married  are 
apt  to  betake  themselves  fervently  to  religious  exercises,  and 
thus  to  find  an  outlet  for  repressed  feeling  in  an  extreme  devo- 
tional life  ;  having  of  necessity  much  self-feeling,  they  naturally 
fly  to  a  system  .which  expressly  sanctions  and  encourages  a  habit 
of  attention  to  the  feelings  and  thoughts — a  self-brooding— and 
which  attracts  to  them  the  sympathy  and  interest  of  others. 
This  is  not,  nor  can  it  come  to,  good :  as  the  man  whose  every 
organ  is  in  perfect  health  scarcely  knows  that  he  has  a  body,  and 
only  is  made  conscious  that  he  has  organs  when  something 
morbid  is  going  on,  so  a  healthy  mind  in  the  full  exercise  of  its 
functions,  is  not  conscious  that  it  has  feelings,  and  is  only 
awakened  to  self-consciousness  by  something  morbid  in  the  pro- 
cesses of  its  activity.  To  fly  for  refuge  to  the  contemplation  of 
one's  own  feelings  and  thoughts  is  in  direct  frustration  of  the 
purposes  of  one's  being  as  an  element  in  nature,  and  in  the 
direct  way  of  predisposing  to  insanity.  It  is  only  in  actions 
that  we  truly  live,  and  by  our  actions  that  we  can  truly  know 
ourselves.  How  mischievous,  then,  any  encouragement  of  a 
morbid  self- feeling,  religious  or  otherwise,  is  likely  to  be,  it  is 
easy  to  perceive.  Among  the  cases  of  mental  disease  that  have 
come  under  my  care,  there  are  some  in  which  the  cause  of  the 
outbreak  has  been  satisfactorily  traceable  to  religious  influence 
injudiciously  exerted.  Not  amongst  Dissenters  only,  but  amongst 
those  members  of  the  High  Church  party  in  the  Church  of 
England  who  are  so: much- addicted  to  playing  at  Eoman  Catho- 
licism, the  most  baneful  effect  is  sometimes  produced  on  women 
through  the  ignorant  influence  and  misapplied  zeal  of  priests, 
who  mistake  for  deep  religious  feeling  what  is  really  sometimes 
a  morbid  self-feeling,  arising  out  of  an  unsatisfied  sexual  instinct, 
and  what  is  many  times  accompanied  by  hysterical  excitement, 
and  sometimes  even  by  habitual  self-abuse. 


tl  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  21 1 

The  Koman  Catholic  religion  cannot,  I  believe,  be  justly 
charged  with  any  such  positive  influence  for  evil  on  those  who 
have  been  born  and  bred  up  within  its  pale.  On  them  its  effect 
is  rather  to  arrest  mental  development  by  imposing  the  divine 
authority  of  the  Church,  and  thus  keeping  the  mind  in  leading- 
strings.  The  unquestioning  faith  demanded  and  accorded  as  the 
habit  of  life  is  not  calculated  to  predispose  to  insanity.  But  the 
influence  of  Eoman  Catholicism,  as  represented  by  some  of  the 
over-zealous  perverts  from  the  English  Church,  is  in  the  highest 
degree  mischievous  :  it  is  a  hotbed,  fostering  the  weaknesses  of 
weak  women,  the  morbid  tendencies  of  those  who  are  half  insane, 
and,  too  often,  the  evil  impulses  of  the  vicious.  It  becomes  the 
congenial  refuge  of  those  who  are  so  afflicted  with  restless 
passions,  ill-regulated  feelings,  and  selfish  impulses,  that  they 
are  unable  to  conform  long  to  their  social  duties  and  relations, 
and  are  ever  eager  for  change,  excitement,  and  attention,  at 
whatever  cost.  Without  doubt  a  hot  religious  perversion,  and 
the  earnest  display  of  a  feverish  religious  zeal,  are,  in  some 
instances,  really  a  phase  in  the  manifestations  of  a  morbid 
disposition,  not  unlikely  to  pass  at  some  time  into  actual  mental 
derangement. 

In  weighing  the  effect  on  the  mind  of  any  form  of  religion,  it 
is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  that  a  person's  particular  creed  is 
to  some  extent  the  result  of  his  character  and  mode  of  develop- 
ment. The  egoist  whose  vanity  and  self-love  have  not  other 
outlets  of  display  will  manifest  his  disposition  in  his  religious 
views  and  practice.  The  victim  of  a  morbid  self-feeling,  or  an 
extreme  self-conceit,  will  find  in  a  certain  religious  zeal  the  con- 
venient gratification  of  an  egoistic  passion,  of  the  real  nature 
of  which  he  himself  is  ignorant.  Those  who  make  it  their 
business  to  get  rich  by  over-reaching  and  deceiving  others, 
invariably  end  by  over-reaching  and  deceiving  themselves  in  the 
sincere  assumption  of  religious  observances  entirely  inconsistent 
with  the  tenor  of  their  daily  lives.  When  such  persons  become 
insane,  we  cannot  truly  say  that  religion  has  been  the  cause  of 
the  disease,  although  it  can  admit  of  no  question  that  the  mental 
degeneration,  which  has  been  the  natural  issue  of  the  mode  of 
development  of  the  character,  has  found  in  the" religious  views  and 
practices  adopted  circumstances  very  favourable  to  its  increase. 


212  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

Condition  of  Life.  —  The  statistics  hitherto  collected  with 
reference  to  this  point  are  of  little  or  no  value.  Whether  a  par- 
ticular profession  or  trade  favours  the  production  of  insanity, 
is  generally  a  question  of  the  habits  incidental  to  its  pursuit, 
— whether  those  who  follow  it  live  soberly  and  temperately,  or 
whether  they  are  addicted  to  intemperance  and  riotous  living. 
On  the  whole,  however,  those  who  work  with  the  head  are  more 
liable  to  mental  disease  than  those  who  work  with  the  hand, 
and  they  are  less  likely  to  recover  when  once  attacked  :  the 
more  complex  mental  organization  of  the  former,  and  the 
greater  activity  of  function,  will  render  it  conceivable  how 
that  should  be  so.  Other  things  being  equal,  it  is  certain  that 
insanity  is  more  frequent  amongst  the  unmarried  than  amongst 
the  married. 

Age  and  Period  of  Life. — Insanity  is  rare  before  puberty, 
although  it  is  certain  that  every  form  of  it,  except  general  para- 
lysis, may  occur  even  so  early  in  life.  Idiocy  is  the  most  com- 
mon form  of  mental  defect  in  the  early  years  of  life  ;  and  even 
the  cases  of  mania  met  with  occasionally  in  children  partake  a 
good  deal  of  the  character  of  idiocy,  and  might  be  described  as 
examples  of  excited  idiocy.  The  mental  organization  has  not 
been  completely  accomplished,  and  the  symptoms  of  its  degene- 
ration are  therefore  somewhat  uniform  in  character.  Between 
the  ages  of  sixteen  and  twenty-five,  insanity  is  far  more  fre- 
quent ;  but  it  is  the  most  frequent  of  all  during  the  period  of 
full  mental  and  bodily  development — from  twenty-five  to  forty- 
five — when  the  mental  functions  are  most  active,  and  when  there 
is  the  widest  exposure  to  its  causes.  The  internal  revolution 
which  takes  place  in  women  at  the  climacteric  period  leads  to 
many  outbreaks  of  a  melancholic  insanity  in  them  between  forty 
and  fifty.  In  the  male  there  appears  to  be  a  climacteric  period 
between  fifty  and  sixty,  when  insanity  sometimes  supervenes. 
In  old  people  symptoms  of  mental  derangement  sometimes  pre- 
cede for  a  time  softening  of  the  brain  and  dementia;  an  old 
man  may  be  found  to  be  keeping  a  mistress  in  secret,  or  to  be 
making  foolish  proposals  of  marriage,  when  sensual  impulses 
only"  mock  extinct  sexual  functions. 

Hereditary  Predisposition. — The  more  exact  and  scrupulous 
the  researches  made,  the  more  distinctly  is  displayed  the  in- 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  213 

fluence  of  hereditary  taint  in  the  production  of  insanity.  The 
main  value,  indeed,  of  the  many  doubtful  statistics  collected  in 
reference  to  this  point  is  to  prove  that,  with  the  increase  of 
opportunities  of  obtaining  exact  information,  the  greater  is  the 
proportion  of  cases  of  insanity  in  which  hereditary  predispo- 
sition is  detectable.  This  proportion  is  put  by  some  authors — as 
Moreau — as  high  as  nine-tenths,  by  others  as  low  as  one-tenth  ; 
the  most  careful  researches  agreeing  to  fix  it  as  not  lower  than 
one-fourth,  if  not  so  high  as  one-half.  Of  fifty  insane  persons, 
taken  without  any  selection,  the  family  histories  of  whom  I  was 
able  to  trace  with  considerable  precision,  there  was  strongly 
marked  hereditary  predisposition — that  is,  there  was  the  positive 
evidence  of  an  inherited  predisposition  to  insanity — in  fourteen 
cases ;  while  there  was  in  ten  more  cases  sufficient  evidence  of 
an  inborn  infirmity  or  instability  of  nervous  element,  not  due  to 
actual  insanity  in  any  of  the  immediate  ancestors,  but  acquired 
or  developed  in  them  for  the  first  time,  in  consequence  of  degene- 
rative influences  at  work.  Two  important  considerations  in 
regard  to  this  question  should  have  full  weight  given  them  : 
first,  that  the  native  infirmity  or  taint  may  be  of  very  different 
degrees  of  intensity,  so  as,  on  the  one  hand,  to  conspire  only  with 
certain  more  or  less  powerful  exciting  causes,  or,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  give  rise  to  insanity  even  amidst  the  most  favourable 
external  circumstances  ;  secondly,  that  not  insanity  only  in  the 
parents,  but  any  form  of  nervous  disease  in  them — epilepsy, 
hysteria,  and  even  neuralgia — may  predispose  to  insanity  in  the 
offspring,  as,  conversely,  insanity  in  the  parent  may  predispose 
to  other  kinds  of  nervous  disease  in  the  offspring.  "Whatever, 
then,  may  be  the  exact  number  of  cases  in  which  hereditary 
predisposition  is  positively  ascertained,  it  may,  I  think,  be 
broadly  asserted  that,  in  the  great  majority  of  cases,  whether 
there  has  been  observable  madness  or  not  in  father  or  mother, 
or  some  remoter  relative,  there  has  been  some  constitutional 
instability  or  infirmity  of  nervous  element  in  the  individual 
whereby  he  has  been  unable  to  rally  against  adversity,  and  has 
broken  down  in  insanity.  Infinitely  various  as  the  constitu- 
tional idiosyncrasies  of  men  notably  are,  it  is  easy  to  perceive 
how  impossible  it  is  that  statistics  should  ever  give  exact  infor- 
mation concerning  the  causation  of  insanity  ;  here,  as  in  so  many 


214  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

instances  <3f  their  application,  their  value  is  that  they  settle 
distinctly  the  existence  of  a  certain  tendency,  so  to  speak,  which, 
once  fixed,  affords  a  good  starting-point  for  further  and  more 
rigorous  researches :  they  indicate  the  direction  of  future  inves- 
tigation. 

Careful  inquiries  into  the  sundry  and  manifold  causes  of 
nervous  degeneration  could  not  fail  to  attract  attention  to  the 
metamorphoses  •which  diseases  undergo  in  hereditary  trans- 
mission, as  a  matter  demanding  exact  study.  We  certainly  dis- 
tinguish in  our  nomenclature  the  different  nervous  diseases,  but, 
.as  we  actually  meet  with  them  in  practice,  the  disorders  of  the 
different  nervous  centres  may  occasionally  blend,  or  combine,  or 
replace  one  another  in  a  remarkable  manner,  so  as  to  give  rise  to 
varieties  of  disease  intermediate  between  those  which  are  com- 
monly regarded  as  typical.  Now  this  circumstance,  manifest 
enough  in  individual  life,  is  much  more  plainly  displayed  when 
we  trace  the  history  and  progress  of  nervous  disease  through 
generations.  If,  instead  of  limiting  attention  to  the  individual, 
we  scan  the  organic  evolution  and  decay  of  a  family — processes 
which,  as  in  the  organism,  are  sometimes  going  on  simulta- 
neously— then  it  is  made  sufficiently  evident  how  close  are  the 
fundamental  relations  of  nervous  diseases,  how  artificial  the 
divisions  between  them  may  sometimes  appear.  Epilepsy  in  the 
parent  may  become  insanity  in  the  offspring,  or  insanity  in  the 
parent  epilepsy  in  the  child ;  and  chorea  or  convulsions  in  the 
child  may  be  the  consequence  of  great  nervous  excitability, 
natural  or  accidental,  in  the  mother.  In  families  in  which  there 
is  a  strong  predisposition  to  insanity,  it  is  not  uncommon  to  find 
one  member  afflicted  with  one  form  of  nervous  disease,  and 
another  with  another  ;  one  suffers  perhaps  from  epilepsy,  another 
from  neuralgia  or  hysteria,  a  third  may  commit  suicide,  and  a 
fourth  become  maniacal.  General  paralysis  is  a  disease  which  is 
iisually  the  result  of  continued  excesses  of  one  sort  or  another  ; 
but  it  may  unquestionably  occur  without  any  marked  excesses, 
and  when  it  does  so  there  will  mostly  be  discoverable  a  heredi- 
tary taint  in  the  individual.  More  than  this  :  an  innate  taint 
or  infirmity  of  nervous  element  may  modify  in  a  striking  manner 
the  mode  of  manifestation  of  other  diseases  ;  where  it  exists,  gout 
flying  about  the  body  may  produce  obscure  nervous  symptoms, 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  215 

so  as  greatly  to  puzzle  the  inexperienced  practitioner,  and  the 
syphilitic  poison  is  similarly  apt  to  seize  upon  the  weak  part, 
and  to  give  rise  to  severe  nervous  symptoms.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  can  admit  of  no  question  that  a  parental  disease  which  does 
not  specially  affect  the  nervous  system,  may,  notwithstanding, 
be  at  the  foundation  of  a  delicate  nervous  constitution  in  the 
offspring :  phthisis,  scrofula,  syphilis,  perhaps  also  gout  and 
diabetes,  may  act  thus  banefully. 

The  interesting  researches  of  Morel  into  the  formation  of 
degenerate  or  morbid  varieties  of  the  human  race  have  served  to 
furnish  a  philosophical  view  of  the  chain  of  events  by  which 
causes  that  give  rise  to  individual  degeneracy  continue  their 
morbid  action  through  generations,  and  finally  issue  in  the 
extinction  of  the  family.  When  some  of  the  evil  influences 
which  notably  give  rise  to  disease — whether  the  poisoned  atmo- 
sphere of  a  marshy  district,  or  the  unknown  endemic  causes  of 
cretinism,  or  the  overcrowding  and  starvation  of  our  large  towns, 
or  persistent  intemperance  of  any  kind,  or  frequent  inter- 
marriages in  families,  or  any  other  of  the  sources  of  human 
degeneracy — have  engendered  a  morbid  variety,  the  evil  will, 
unless  counteracted  by  better  influences  brought  to  bear,  increase 
through  generations,  until  the  degeneration  has  gone  so  far  that 
the  continuance  of  the  species  is  impossible.  Indeed,  insanity 
of  what  form  soever,  whether  mania,  melancholia,  moral  insanity, 
or  dementia,  is  but  a  stage  in  the  descent  towards  sterile  idiocy, 
as  may  be  experimentally  proved  by  the  intermarriage  of  men- 
tally unsound  persons  for  a  generation  or  two,  and  as  is  some- 
times demonstrated  by  the  disastrous  consequences  of  frequent 
intermarriages  in  foolish  families.  Morel  relates  the  history  of 
one  family,  which  may  be  adduced  as  a  typical  example  of  the 
course  of  degeneration  proceeding  unchecked,  and  which  may  be 
summed  up  thus  : — 

First  generation. — Immorality.  Alcoholic  excess.  Brutal 
degradation. 

Second  generation. — Hereditary  drunkenness.  Maniacal  at- 
tacks. General  paralysis. 

Third  generation.  —  Sobriety.  Hypochondria.  Lypemania. 
Systematic  mania.  Homicidal  tendencies. 

Fourth  generation. — Feeble  intelligence.      Stupidity.      First 


216  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

attack  of  mania  at  sixteen.     Transition  to  complete  idiocy,  and 
probable  extinction  of  the  family. 

In  this  degeneration  going  on  through  generations  we  have  a 
retrograde  movement  which  is  the  opposite  of  that  progressive 
specialization,  and  increasing  complexity  of  relation  with  the 
external,  which  have  already  been  described  as  characteristic  of 
advancing  development.  In  place  of  sound  and  proper  elements, 
which  may  take  their  due  place  and  perform  their  co-ordinate 
function  in  the  social  organism,  there  are  produced  morbid 
varieties  fit  only  for  excretion.  For,  in  truth,  we  may  not  im- 
properly compare  the  social  fabric  to  the  bodily  organism  in  this 
regard :  as  in  bodily  disease  there  is  a  retrograde  metamorphosis 
of  formative  action,  and  morbid  elements  are  produced,  so  in  the 
appearance  of  insanity  in  individuals  we  have  examples  of  the 
formation  of  morbid  varieties  in  the  social  organism,  and  the 
evidence  of  a  degeneration  of  the  human  kind.  And  as  in  the 
body  morbid  elements  cannot  minister  to  healthy  action,  but,  if 
not  got  rid  of,  give  rise  to  disorder,  and  even  death ;  so  in  the 
'social  fabric  morbid  varieties  are  themselves  on  the  way  of 
death,  and  if  not  sequestrated  in  the  social  system,  or  extruded 
from  it,  inevitably  engender  disorder  incompatible  with  its 
stability.  But,  however  much  man  may  degenerate  from  his 
high  estate,  he  never  really  reverts  to  the  exact  type  of  the 
animal,  though  he  may  sink  lower  (tban  it :  the  so-called  tlicroid 
degeneration,  spoken  of  by  some  writers,  signifies  no  more  than  a 
resemblance  to  the  animals.  As  it  is  among  plants,  where  de- 
generation of  species  notably  gives  rise  to  a  new  morbid  kind,  so 
it  is  in  man :  lunatics  and  idiots  represent  new  morbid  kinds  : 
the  mighty  are  fallen,  but  the  might  is  manifest  even  in  the 
\vrecks. 

Baillarger  has  confirmed  what  Esquirol  had  observed,  that 
insanity  descends  more  often  from  the  mother  than  the  father, 
and  from  the  mother  to  the  daughters  more  often  than  to  the  sons. 
Children  born  before  the  outbreak  of  an  attack  are  less  likely  to 
suffer  than  those  born  after  an  outbreak. 

Thus  much  concerning  the  remote  or  predisposing  causes  of 
insanity :  it  remains  now  to  set  forth  the  direct  or  proximate 
causes  of  defect  or  derangement  of  the  supreme  centres  of  intel- 
ligence. In  doing  this  it  will  be  most  convenient,  and  in  the 


I.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  217 

end  most  philosophical,  to  describe  them  under  similar  divisions 
to  those  under  wliich  have  already  been  grouped  the  causes  of 
disorder  of  the  ganglionic,  sensori-motor,  and  spinal  centres — in 
other  words,  to  treat  of  the  causation  of  insanity  from  a  patho- 
logical point  of  view. 


THE  PROXIMATE  CAUSES  OF  DISOEDER  OF  THE  IDEATIONAL  NER- 
VOUS CENTRES,  THE  SUPREME  GANGLIONIC  CELLS  OF  THE 
CEREBRAL  HEMISPHERES,  THE  INTELLECTORIUM  COMMUNE. 

1.  Original  Differences  in  the  Constitution  of  the  Supreme  Ner- 
vous Centres. — It  is  most  certain  that  there  exist  great  natural 
differences  between  different  people  in  respect  of  the  develop- 
ment of  their  cerebral  convolutions.  In  the  lower  races  of  men 
these  are  visibly  less  complex  and  more  symmetrical  than  in 
the  higher  races  ;  the  anatomical  differences  corresponding  with 
differences  in  intellectual  capacity.  Place  a  Bushman,  with  his 
inferior  type  of  brain,  in  the  complex  circumstances  of  civilized 
life  ;  and  though  he  may  represent  a  high  grade  of  development 
of  his  lower  type,  he  is  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  as  Gratiolet 
allows,  an  idiot,  and  must,  unless  otherwise  cared  for,  inevitably 
perish  in  the  severe  competition  for  existence.  And  if  a  person, 
from  some  arrest  of  the  natural  development,  is  born  amongst 
civilized  people  with  a  brain  of  no  higher  order  than  the  natural 
brain  of  the  Bushman,  it  is  plain  that  he  will  be  more  or  less  of 
an  idiot ;  a  higher  type  of  brain,  arrested  by  morbid  causes  at 
a  low  grade  of  development,  is  brought  to  the  level  of  a  lower 
type  of  brain  which  has  arrived  at  its  full  development.  As  Von 
Baer  long  ago  pointed  out,  the  actual  position  of  a  particular 
animal  in  the  scale  of  life  is  determined,  not  by  the  type  alone, 
nor  by  the  grade  of  development  alone,  but  by  the  product  of 
the  type  and  the  grade  of  development. 

The  principal  varieties  of  defective  brain  met  with  may  be* 
briefly  indicated  here   as  falling  under   one  of  the  following 
divisions  : — 

(a)  There  are  idiots  of  the  mierocephalic  type,  in  whom  an 
arrest  of  cerebral  development  has  taken  place,  and  a  palpably 
defective  brain  is  met  with  in  consequence.  Malacarne  was  at 
the  pains  carefully  to  count  the  laminae  of  the  cerebellum  in 


.A        "i~ 


\ 


218  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

idiots  and  in  men  of  intelligence,  and  he  found  them  to  be  less 
numerous  in  the  former  than  in  the  latter.  Now,  these  laminae 
are  less  numerous  in  the  chimpanzee  and  the  orang  than  in  man, 
and  still  less  numerous  in  other  monkeys  ;  so  far,  therefore,  there 
is  an  approximation  in  some  idiots  to  the  simian  type  of  brain. 
Mr.  Paeret  mentions  an  idiot's  brain  in  which  there  had  been 

o 

a  complete  arrest  of  development  at  the  fifth  month  of  foetal  life : 
there  were  no  posterior  lobes,  the  cerebellum  being  only  half- 
covered  by  the  cerebral  hemispheres.  Gratiolet  found  in  the 
brain  of  a  microcephalic  idiot,  aged  seven,  the  under  surface  of 
the  anterior  lobes  much  hollowed,  with  great  convexity  of  the 
orbital  arches,  as  is  the  rule  in  the  monkey.*  Mr.  Marshall  has 
carefully  examined,  and  described  in  an  elaborate  paper,  the 
brains  of  two  idiots  of  European  descent :  the  convolutions  were 
fewer  in  number  than  in  the  apes,  individually  less  complex, 
broader,  and  smoother — "  In  this  respect,"  he  observes,  "  the 
idiots'  brains  are  even  more  simple  than  the  brain  of  the  gibbon, 
and  approach  that  of  the  baboon  (Cynocephalus)  and  sapajou 
(Ateles)."  -j-  Though  he  agrees  with  other  observers  that  the  con- 
dition of  the  cerebra  in  the  idiots  is  neither  the  result  of  atrophy, 
nor  of  a  mere  arrest  of  growth,  but  consists  essentially  in  an 
imperfect  evolution  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres  or  their  parts, 
dependent  on  an  arrest  of  development,  he  points  out  the  strong 
grounds  there  are  for  inferring  that,  after  the  cessation  of  evolu- 
tional changes,  the  cerebra  experience  an  increase  of  size  gene- 
rally, or  a  mere  growth  of  their  several  parts.  Consequently  the 
cerebra  are  much  larger  than  foetal  cerebra  in  which  the  convo- 
lutional  development  is  at  a  similar  stage ;  whilst  the  individual 
convolutions  themselves,  though  the  same  in  number,  are  neces- 
sarily broader  and  deeper.  Not  only  is  the  brain-weight  in 
microcephalous  idiocy  very  low  absolutely,  as  the  instructive 
tables  of  Dr.  Thurnam  show,  but  the  relative  amount  of  brain 
to  body  is  "  extraordinarily  "  diminished.  Thus  in  the  two  idiots 
described  by  Mr.  Marshall  the  proportion  of  brain  to  body  was 
only  as  1  to  140  in  the  female,  and  as  1  to  67  in  the  male,  the 
normal  proportions  being  as  1  to  33  and  as  1  to  14  respectively. 
It  is  not  necessary  that  I  quote  more  authorities  to  prove  that 

*  Anatomie  compares  du  Systems  Nerveux. 
+  Philosophical  Transactions,  loc.  tit. 


I.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  219 

nmall-headed  idiots  have  small  brains,  and  sometimes  even  fewer 
and  more  simple  convolutions  than  the  chimpanzee  and  the 
orang:  that  man,  thus  made  a  morbid  Tdnd  by  an  arrest  of 
development,  is  brought  to  a  lower  level  than  that  of  his  nearest 
related  fellow  animal.  A  strict  examination  of  the  stories  of 
•wild  men,  as  of  Peter  the  Wild  Boy,  and  the  young  savage  of 
Aveyron,  has  proved  that  these  were  really  cases  of  defective 
organization — pathological  specimens.* 

(6)  In  idiots  or  imbeciles  of  the  Cretin  type,  where  the  morbid 
condition  is  endemic,  the  defect  seems  to  depend  on  certain 
morbid  changes  which  primarily  affect  the  skull  rather  than  the 
brain.  Injurious  influences,  affecting  the  general  processes  of 
the  bodily  nutrition,  prevent  the  normal  growth  of  the  bones, 
and  lead  to  a  premature  ossification  of  the  sutures,  and  a  con- 
sequent narrowing  of  the  skull  at  the  part  -where  this  happens. 
Secondary  wide  interference  with  the  development  of  other  parts 
of  the  skull  and  compensating  enlargements  in  other  directions 
follow  the  primary  evil,  and  give  rise  to  cranial  deformities  of 
various  kinds.  Of  necessity  the  natural  growth  of  the  brain  is 
hindered  by  those  morbid  changes ;  and  it  is  no  wonder  that 
the  deformed  head  of  the  Cretin  is  accompanied  with  a  torpid 
apathetic  character  and  with  great  mental  deficiency.  As  the 
evil  changes  are  commonly  not  manifest  until  a  year  or  more 
after  birth,  an  objection  might  well  be  made  to  the  description  of 
them  as  original  defects ;  but  whatever  the  nature  of  the  unknown 
morbid  influence  which  is  the  cause  of  cretinism,  whether  malari- 
ous or  not,  it  can  admit  of  no  question  that  it  acts  upon  the  mother 
perniciously,  and  predetermines  the  cretinism  of  the  child. 

(c)  It  is  obvious  that  an  arrest  of  the  development  of  the 
brain  occurring  soon  after  birth  may  give  rise  to  idiocy  just  as 
certainly  as  an  arrest  occurring  some  time  before  birth.  And 
although  an  objection  might  here  again  be  made  to  the  descrip- 
tion of  such  a  defect  as  original,  yet  if  we  reflect  that  the 
important  development  of  the  brain  as  the  supreme  organ  of  the 
conscious  life,  as  subserving  the  mental  organization,  does  really 
take  place  after  birth,  we  may  admit  a  defect  rendering  such 
development  impossible  to  be,  though  not  congenital,  practically 

*  Observations  on  the  deranged  Manifestations  of  the  Hind.  By  J.  S.  Spurz- 
heim,  M.D. 


220  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY. 

original.  There  are  many  idiots  in  whom  the  brain  and  body 
appear  to  be  well  formed,  while  the  mental  development  remains 
at  the  lowest  stage.  Accidental  affections  of  the  brain  arresting 
its  development  after  birth,  while  the  rest  of  the  body  goes 
through  its  normal  growth,  have  occurred  in  some  of  these  cases  ; 
epilepsy  is  not  uncommonly  such  a  cause  of  idiocy ;  but  it  is 
impossible  in  some  cases  to  assign  any  definite  cause  of  the 
arrest.  Other  idiotic  creatures  have  the  development  of  the 
body  as  well  as  mind  arrested :  the  extremest  cases  of  this  kind 
are  those  in  which  there  has  been  a  complete  cessation  of  growth 
at  an  early  period  of  childhood,  without  any  observable  deformity. 
Dancel  has  recorded  the  case  of  a  girl,  aged  twenty-four,  who  had 
developed  normally  up  to  the  age  of  three  and  a  half  years,  after 
which  no  further  growth  took  place  until  she  reached  eighteen 
and  a  half  years,  her  bodily  and  mental  condition  being  that  of 
a  child  of  three  and  a  half  years  old.  At  twenty-one  she  in- 
creased a  very  little  in  size  and  then  remained  unchanged  for 
the  rest  of  life.  Baillarger  exhibited,  in  May  1857,  to  the  French 
Academy  of  Medicine,  a  young  woman  aged  twenty-seven,  who 
onjy  had  the  intelligence  and  inclinations  of  a  child  four  years  old, 
and  who  was  about  three  feet  high.  I  have  seen  a  somewhat  similar 
instance  in  an  idiot  boy.  These  extreme  and  singular  cases  are 
well  calculated  to  excite  surprise  and  curiosity ;  they  are,  how- 
ever, only  the  manifest  consequences  of  a  deficiency  in  develop- 
mental power  which  is  not  unfrequently  met  with  in  less  marked 
degree,  and  which  is  actually  witnessed  in  every  sort  of  degree. 
In  any  large  idiot  asylum  there  are  to  be  found  some  who,  with- 
out any  particular  deformity,  without  any  observable  disease  of 
brain  or  defective  development  of  it,  are  generally  sluggish  both 
in  bodily  and  mental  development ;  their  size  is  small ;  their 
sexual  development  takes  place  late  in  life,  or  perhaps  does  not 
take  place  at  all ;  they  often  exhibit  some  peculiarity  of  counte- 
nance, perhaps  a  squint ;  in  mental  capacity  they  are  in  advance 
of  the  true  idiots,  for  they  can  learn  a  little,  are  capable  of 
remembering,  and  sometimes  imitate  cleverly :  some  of  them 
constitute  the  "  show-cases  "  of  the  idiot  asylum  when  they  are 
in  it ;  and  when  they  are  not,  they  may  become  difficult  cases  for 
medico-legal  inquiry,  in  which  the  decision  come  to,  whatever  it 
be,  may  be  challenged  not  without  reason.  All  the  concern  that 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITT.  221 

we  have  with  them  here  is  to  draw  from  them  the  certain  con- 
clusion that  there  may,  by  reason  of  unknown  conditions  affecting 
nutrition,  be  every  degree  of  imperfect  development  of  mind  and 
body  down  to  actual  incapacity  to  develop  at  all 

When  there  are  no  such  signs  of  degeneracy  as  to  warrant 
the  mention  of  idiocy  even  in  its  mildest  form,  there  is  still 
abundant  room  for  physical  causes  of  psychical  defect,  without 
our  being  able  to  recognise  them.  The  exceeding  sensibility  of 
nervous  structure,  whereby  an  impression  made  at  one  point  is 
almost  instantaneously  felt  at  any  distance,  is  the  sure  testimony 
of  delicate,  active,  but  occult  movements  of  its  molecules  which, 
like  thermal  oscillations  or  undulations  of  light,  or  the  intimate 
molecular  conditions  of  colour,  belong  to  that  inner  life  of  nature 
that  is  still  impenetrable  to  our  most  delicate  means  of  investi- 
gation, still  inaccessible  to  our  most  subtle  inquiries.  Who  can 
say  what  is  the  nature  of  those  hidden  molecular  activities  which 
are  the  direct  causes  of  our  different  tastes  and  smells  ?  Could 
we  but  ascertain  what  these  fundamental  processes  essentially 
are,  we  might  perhaps  attain  to  some  knowledge  of  the  intimate 
constitution  of  bodies ;  indeed  it  seems  not  improbable  that  in 
the  scientific  cultivation  and  development  of  the  senses  of  taste 
and  smell,  as  the  eye,  the  ear,  and  the  touch  have  been  cultivated 
and  developed,  we  may  ultimately  gain  some  means  of  insight 
into  the  inner  recesses  of  nature. 

A  second  reason  why  there  may  be  numerous  and  serious 
defects  of  nervous  structure  without  its  being  possible  to  recog- 
nise them,  arises  from  the  infinitely  complex  and  exquisitely 
delicate  structure  of  the  cortical  layers  of  the  hemispheres.  It 
would  certainly  be  most  unwarrantable  to  assume  that  physical 
paths  of  nervous  activity  in  the  supreme  centres  may  not  be 
actually  obliterated  without  our  being  any  the  wiser,  when  it 
was  only  yesterday,  so  to  speak,  that  men  succeeded,  after  infi- 
nite patient  research,  in  demonstrating  a  direct  communication 
between  the  different  nerve-cells,  and  between  nerve  fibres  and 
cells.  The  obliteration  of  such  a  physical  communication  in  the 
supreme  centres  would  simply  render  impossible  a  certain  asso- 
ciation of  ideas,  or  the  transference  of  the  activity  of  the  idea  to 
a  nerve  fibre — the  expression  of  the  mind. 

Thirdly,  it  must  be  admitted  that,  all  question  of  defect  of 


222  0-V  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

physical  structure  put  aside,  the  extremest  derangement  of 
function  might  be  due  to  chemical  changes  in  nerve  element 
— changes  which,  in  the  present  state  of  knowledge,  are  still 
less  discoverable  than  physical  changes  in  so  complex  a  com- 
pound. Examine  the  cells  of  a  man's  brain  at  the  end  of  a  day 
of  great  mental  activity,  and  at  the  beginning  of  a  day  after  a 
good  night's  rest ;  what  difference  would  be  detectable  ?  None 
whatever ;  yet  the  actual  difference  is  between  a  decomposition 
and  a  recomposition  of  nerve  element — between  a  capacity  and 
an  incapacity  of  function. 

It  is  beyond  question  then  that  there  may  be  modifications  of 
the  polar  molecules  of  nervous  element,  changes  in  its  chemical 
composition,  and  defects  in  the  physical  constitution  of  nervous 
centres,  all  of  which,  entirely  undetectable  by  us,  do  nevertheless 
most  gravely  affect  function,  and  are  thus  most  surely  testified. 

To  affirm,  then,  that  all  men  are  born  equal,  as  is  sometimes 
heedlessly  done,  is  to  make  about  as  palpably  untrue  a  propo- 
sition as  it  is  possible  to  make  in  so  many  words.  There  is  as 
great  a  variety  of  minds  as  there  observably  is  of  faces  or  of 
voices :  as  no  two  faces  and  no  two  voices  are  exactly  alike,  so 
are  no  two  minds  exact  counterparts  of  one  another.  Men  differ 
greatly  both  in  original  capacity  and  in  quality  of  brain.  In 
some  there  is  the  potentiality  of  great  and  varied  development, 
whilst  in  others  there  is  the  innate  incapacity  of  any  develop- 
ment ;  and  between  the  two  extremes  every  gradation  exists. 
There  are  important  differences  also  in  the  quality  of  the  brain 
in  different  people  :  in  some  the  mental  reaction  to  impressions 
is  sluggish  and  incomplete,  and,  without  being  idiots,  they  are 
slow  at  perception  and  stupid ;  in  others,  the  reaction,  though 
not  quick,  is  very  complete,  and  they  retain  ideas  very  firmly, 
although  they  are  slow  at  acquiring  them ;  in  some,  again,  the 
reaction  is  rapid  and  lively,  but  evanescent,  so  that,  though 
quick  at  perception,  they  retain  ideas  with  difficulty ;  while  in 
others,  that  just  equilibrium  between  the  internal  and  external 
exists  by  which  the  reaction  is  exactly  adequate  to  the  impres- 
sion, and  the  consequent  assimilation  is  most  complete.  These 
natural  differences  in  the  taking  up  of  impressions  plainly  hold 
good  also  of  the  further  processes  of  digestion  and  combination 
of'  idea,  which  in  the  progress  of  mental  development  follow 


I.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  223 

upon  the  concrete  perception.  It  is  easy  surely  to  perceive  that 
we  have,  as  original  facts  of  nature,  every  kind  of  variation  in 
the  quality  of  mind  and  in  the  degree  of  reasoning  capacity. 

So  long  as  we  are  unable  to  discover  any  explanation  of  the 
causation  of  a  fact  which  yet  seems  to  stand  out  very  distinctly, 
it  is  wonderful  how  difficult  it  is  to  accept  it  heartily,  how  easy 
indeed  it  becomes  to  overlook  it  habitually  ;  but  as  soon  as  we 
have 'attained  to  a  knowledge  of  its  cause  and  relations,  then  the 
recognition  of  it  becomes  a  part  of  our  habit  of  thought  and  per- 
ception :  it  has  entered  into  our  mental  organization.  Because 
it  has  been  the  fashion  to  look  upon  an  individual  as  though 
he  were  the  product  of  an  independent  creative  act,  and  a  self- 
sufficient  being — because  men  commonly  look  not  beyond  a 
single  link  in  the  chain  of  causation — therefore  it  has  been 
impossible  hitherto  to  uproot  the  erroneous  notion,  explicitly  or 
implicitly  held,  that  each  one  is  endowed  by  nature  with  a 
certain  fixed  mental  potentiality  of  uniform  character.  But, 
now  that  observation  reveals  more  and  more  clearly  every  day 
how  much  the  capacity  and  character,  bodily  and  mental,  of  the 
individual  is  dependent  upon  his  ancestral  antecedents,  it  is  im- 
possible to  deny  that  a  man  may  suffer  irremediable  ill  through 
the  misfortune  of  a  bad  descent.  Each  one  is  a  link  in  the  chain 
of  organic  beings,  a  physical  consequent  of  physical  antecedents ; 
the  idiot  is  not  an  accident,  nor  the  irreclaimable  criminal  an 
unaccountable  casualty ;  the  laws  of  causality  have  sway  here 
as  elsewhere  in  nature.  It  cannot  but  be,  therefore,  of  the 
utmost  importance,  when  tracing  the  causation  of  insanity,  to 
weigh  closely  the  elements  of  the  individual  character. 

Viewed  on  its  physical  side,  as  it  rightly  should  be  viewed,  a 
predisposition  to  insanity  means  nothing  less  than  some  defect 
or  vice  in  the  actual  constitution  or  composition  of  the  nervous 
element  of  which  the  mental  phenomena  are  functional  manifes- 
tations ;  there  is  an  instability  of  organic  composition,  the  direct 
result  of  certain  unfavourable  physical  antecedents.  The  retro- 
grade metamorphosis  of  mind,  manifest  in  the  different  kinds  of 
insanity,  and  proceeding  as  far  as  actual  extinction  in  extreme 
examples  of  dementia,  is  the  further  physical  consequence  of  the 
hidden  defect  of  constitution  or  composition  of  nervous  element. 
It  is  easy  enough,  no  doubt,  to  point  to  the  nervous  substance  of 


224  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

the  infertile  idiot's  brain,  and  to  that  of  the  philosopher's,  and 
to  maintain  that  the  kind  of  organic  element  of  which  they  are 
constituted  is  the  same,  as  it  appears  to  be ;  but  so  long  as  we 
have  no  exact  knowledge  of  the  constitution  of  nervous  element, 
such  an  assertion  is  an  unwarrantable  assumption ;  and,  while 
the  functional  effects  are  so  widely  different  in  the  two  cases, 
there  are  the  most  valid  reasons  for  contradicting  it. 

The  conclusion,  then,  at  which  we  have  arrived  is,  that  when 
an  individual  is,  by  reason  of  a  bad  descent,  born  with  a  pre- 
disposition to  insanity,  he  has  a  native  constitution  of  nervous 
element  which,  whatever  name  wre  give  it,  is  unstable  or  defec- 
tive, rendering  him  unequal  to  bear  the  severe  stress  of  adverse 
events.  In  other  words,  the  man  has  the  insane  temperament ; 
he  is  liable  to  whimsical  caprices  of  thought  and  feeling ;  and, 
although  he  may  act  calmly  and  rationally  for  the  most  part,  yet 
now  and  then  his  unconscious  nature,  overpowering  and  surprising 
him,  instigates  eccentric  or  extravagant  actions  ;  while  an  extra- 
ordinary and  trying  emergency  may  upset  his  stability  entirely. 
If  it  were  thought  desirable  to  give  a  name  to  this  temperament 
or  diathesis,  as  in  algebra  we  employ  a  letter  to  represent  an 
unknown  quantity,  it  might  properly  be  described  as  the  Diathesis 
spasmodica  or  the  Neurosis  spasmodica;  such  names  expressing 
very  well  an  essential  character  of  the  temperament, — that  is, 
the  tendency  to  independent  and  spasmodic  action  on  the  part  of 
the  different  nervous  centres.  There  is,  in  fact,  some  inherent 
instability  of  nervous  element,  whereby  the  mutual  reaction  of 
the  nerve-cells  in  the  higher  walks  of  nervous  function  does 
not  properly  take  place,  and  due  consent  or  co-ordination  of 
function  is  replaced  by  irregular  and  purposeless  independent 
reaction  outwards  :  there  is,  as  it  were,  a  loss  of  the  power  of 
self-control  in  the  individual  nerve-cell,  an  inability  of  calm 
self-contained  activity,  subordinate  or  co-ordinate,  and  its  energy 
is  dissipated  in  an  explosive  display,  which,  like  the  impulsive 
action  of  the  passionate  man,  surely  denotes  an  irritable  weak- 
ness. Here,  as  elsewhere,  co-ordination  of  function  signifies 
power,  innate  or  acquired,  and  marks  exaltation  of  organic 
development. 

Is  it  not  very  plain  how  impossible  it  is  to  do  full  justice  to 
any  individual,  sane  or  insane,  by  considering  him  as  an  isolated 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  225 

fact  ?  Beneath  his  conscious  activity  and  reflection  there  lies 
the  unconscious  inborn  nature  which  all  unawares  mingles  con- 
tinually in  the  events  of  life — the  spontaneity  whence  spring 
the  sources  of  desire  and  the  impulses  of  action  ;  for  the  con- 
scious and  the  unconscious,  like  warp  and  woof,  together  consti- 
tute the  texture  of  life.  ]STo  one,  be  he  ever  so  cunning  in 
dissimulation  or  crafty  in  reticence,  can  conceal  or  misrepresent 
himself ;  in  spite  of  art  his  real  nature  reveals  itself  in  every 
movement  of  the  part  which  he  plays,  in  every  pulsation  of  his 
life.  The  inborn  nature  constitutes  the  foundation  upon  which 
all  the  acquisitions  of  development  must  rest,  the  substratum  in 
which  fundamentally  all  conscious  mental  phenomena  are  rooted 
When  it  is  radically  defective,  no  amount  of  systematic  labour 
will  avail  to  counterbalance  entirely  the  defect :  it  were  as  hope- 
less to  attempt  to  rear  the  massive  structure  of  a  royal  palace 
upon  foundations  dug  only  for  a  cottage  as  to  impose  the  super- 
structure of  a  large,  vigorous,  and  complete  culture  upon  the 
rotten  foundations  which  an  inherited  taint  of  nervous  element 
implies ;  something  will  always  be  wanting,  some  crack  in  the 
building  will  show  the  instability  of  the  foundations,  even  when 
the  whole  structure  does  not  fall  "  in  ruin  hurled."  Any  mental 
philosophy  which  takes  no  notice  of  the  foundations  of  the 
character,  but  ignores  the  important  individual  differences  of 
nature,  does  not  truly  reflect  the  facts,  and  cannot  fail  to  be  a 
provisional  and  transitory  system.  It  is  guilty,  in  fact,  of  the 
same  error  as  that  into  which  an  introspective  psychology  falls, 
when,  isolating  the  particular  state  of  mind,  and  neglecting  the 
antecedent  conditions  upon  which  it  has  followed,  it  pronounces 
the  will  to  be  free ;  by  isolating  the  individual,  and  forgetting 
that  he  is  but  a  link  in  the  long  chain  of  nature's  organic 
evolution,  it  transforms  him  into  an  abstract  and  impossible 
entity,  and  often  judges  his  actions  with  a  most  unjust  judgment. 
2.  Quantity  and  Quality  of  the  Stood. — The  grey  centres  of 
the  brain,  and  especially  the  cortical  layers  of  the  hemispheres, 
are  well  known  to  be  richly  supplied  with  blood-vessels,  even 
when  comparison  is  made  with  the  notably  abundant  supply  of 
the  spinal  centres.  The  ideational  cells  demand  for  the  due 
exercise  of  their  functions  a  rapid  renewal  of  arterial  blood,  and 
there  is  obviously  an  active  interchange  of  some  kind  con- 
16 


226  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

tinually  going  on  between  the  blood  and  the  nervous  elements. 
The  quantity  and  quality  of  the  blood,  therefore,  circulating 
through  the  supreme  centres,  must  affect  their  functions  in  an 
important  manner,  especially  as  they  are  the  most  sensitive 
elements  of  the  body  in  this  regard.  When  the  most  skilful 
chemist  is  unable  to  detect  anything  unusual  in  the  atmosphere 
of  a  room  in  which  are  many  people,  a  delicate  woman  may  get 
a  headache  and  actually  faint  away.  Send  through  the  brain  of 
any  one  blood  charged  with  carbonic  acid,  and  destiny  could  not 
doom  him  not. to  die  ;  whilst  a  mixture  of  air  and  carbonic  acid 
in  certain  proportions,  inspired  like  chloroform,  will,  like  it,  act 
as  an  anaesthetic,  paralysing  consciousness. 

When  there  is  a  rapid  flow  of  healthy  blood  through  the 
supreme  cerebral  centres,  a  quick  interchange  goes  on  between 
the  nerve-cells  and  the  blood,  and  the  excitation  and  inter- 
action of  ideas  proceed  with  great  vivacity.  The  effect  of  active 
thought  is  to  produce  such  a  determination  of  blood,  which  in 
turn  is  the  necessary  condition  of  the  continuance  of  the  active 
function.  But  when  a  natural  determination  of  blood  degene- 
rates into  a  greater  or  less  stasis  or  congestion,  as  it  may  easily 
do  when  intellectual  activity  is  too  much  prolonged,  or  when 
congestion  is  otherwise  produced,  then  there  is  an  inability  to 
think,  and  confusion  of  thought,  emotional  depression  and  irrita- 
bility, swimming  in  the  head,  disturbance  of  sight  and  of  hearing, 
testify  to  a  morbid  condition  of  things.  It  is  striking  how  com- 
pletely a  slight  congestion  of  the  brain  may  incapacitate  for 
mental  activity,  and  how  entirely  the  strong  man  is  prostrated 
thereby :  an  afflicting  stagnation  of  ideas  accompanies  the  stag- 
nation of  blood ;  and  he,  heretofore  so  strong  and  confident,  realizes 
in  vivid  affright  on  how  slight  a  thread  hangs  the  whole  fabric 
of  his  intellect.  If  the  morbid  state  should,  instead  of  remaining 
passive,  or  passing  away  altogether,  become  active,  as  it  does 
when  actual  inflammation  occurs,  then  the  functional  activity  of 
the  cerebral  cells  becomes  most  irregular  and  degenerate ;  the 
co-ordination  of  function  which  is  maintained  in  health  is  lost, 
as  that  of  the  spinal  cord  is  under  like  circumstances,  and  a  wild 
and  incoherent  delirium  witnesses  to  the  independent  and,  if  we 
might  so  speak,  convulsive  action  of  the  different  cells  :  the 
delirious  ideas  are  the  expression  of  a  condition  of  things  in  the 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  22J 

supreme  centres  which  is  the  counterpart  of  that  which  in  the 
spinal  centres  utters  itself  in  spasmodic  movements  or  convul- 
sions. With  the  destruction  of  that  co-ordination  of  function 
which  volition  implies  the  will  is  necessarily  abolished ;  and  such 
purposeless  or  dangerous  acts  as  the  delirious  being  executes  are 
dictated  by  the  morbid  ideas  that  automatically  arise.  Some 
with  inconsiderate  haste  speak  of  this  degenerate  activity  in  its 
earlier  stages  as  increased  mental  activity,  as  they  also  speak  of 
active  inflammation  as  increased  vital  action;  not  otherwise 
than  as  if  convulsions  were  accounted  the  sure  signs  of  strength, 
or  as  if  the  tale  of  an  idiot,  because  it  is  full  of  sound  and  fury, 
though  signifying  nothing,  were  the  safe  index  of  a  high  mental 
activity. 

Since  the  time  of  Hippocrates  it  has  been  known  that  when 
there  is  too  little  blood  in  the  brain  symptoms  are  exhibited 
similar  to  those  which  are  produced  by  a  congestion  of  blood  : 
pains  and  swimming  in  the  head,  confusion  and  incapacity  of 
thought,  affections  of  the  senses  and  of  movement,  occur  in  con- 
sequence of  anaemia  of  the  brain  as  certainly  as  they  do  in  con- 
sequence of  congestion.  In  both  cases  the  due  nutrition  of  the 
nerve-cell,  which  is  the  agent  of  cerebral  function,  is  greatly 
hindered  ;  and  much  of  the  ill  effect  is  similar  though  the  cause 
appears  to  be  so  different.  In  reality,  however,  the  causes  are 
not  so  different  when  we  proceed  to  analyse  the  conditions 
comprised  under  the  terms  anaemia  and  congestion.  In  that 
continued  relation  between  the  organic  element  and  the  blood 
by  which  the  due  reparative  material  is  brought  and  waste 
matter  carried  away,  it  amounts  to  much  the  same  thing  whether 
through  stasis  of  the  blood  the  refuse  is  not  carried  off  and 
reparative  material  brought  to  the  spot  where  it  is  wanted, 
or  whether  the  like  result  ensues  by  reason  of  a  defective  blood 
and  deficient  circulation  :  it  is  little  matter  to  the  inhabitants 
whether  the  street  is  almost  blocked,  or  whether  its  entrance  is 
almost  closed,  so  long  as  free  circulation  is  prevented. 

Temporary  irregularities  in  the  supply  of  blood  to  the  supreme 
nervous  centres  may,  and  often  do,  pass  away  without  leaving 
any  ill  consequences  behind  them ;  but  when  they  recur  fre- 
quently, and  become  more  lasting,  their  disappearance  is  by 
no  means  the  disappearance  of  the  entire  evil :  the  effect  has 


228  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

become  a  cause  that  continues  in  action  after  the  original  cause 
has  been  removed :  and  permanent  mental  disorder  may  be  thus 
established.  Once  the  habit  of  morbid  action  is  fixed  in  a  part, 
it  continues  as  naturally  as,  under  better  auspices,  the  normal 
physiological  action.  It  is  ever,  therefore,  of  the  first  importance 
to  give  timely  heed  to  the  earliest  warning  which  morbid  action 
gives ;  but  it  is  of  especial  importance  to  do  so  in  the  case  of 
organic  element  so  exceedingly  susceptible  and  so  exquisitely 
delicate  as  is  nervous  element. 

A  perverted  condition  of  the  blood  quickly  exercises  a  marked 
effect  tipon  the  function  of  the  supreme  cerebral  cells.  The 
influence  of  alcohol  upon  the  mental  function  furnishes  the  sim- 
plest instance  in  illustration  of  the  action  of  a  foreign  matter 
introduced  into  the  blood  from  without :  here,  where  each  phase 
of  an  artificially-produced  insanity  is  successively  passed  through 
in  a  brief  space  of  time,  we  have  the  abstract  and  brief  chronicle 
of  the  history  of  insanity.  The  first  effect  of  alcohol  is  to  pro- 
duce an  agreeable  excitement,  a  lively  flow  of  ideas,  and  a  general 
activity  of  mind — a  condition  not  unlike  that  which  sometimes 
precedes  an  attack  of  mania  ;  then  there  follows,  as  in  insanity, 
the  automatic  origination  of  ideas  which  start  up  and  follow  one 
another  without  order,  so  that  more  or  less  incoherence  of  thought 
and  speech  is  exhibited,  while  at  the  same  time  passion  is  easily 
excited,  which  takes  different  forms,  according  to  the  individual 
temperament;  after  this  stage  has  lasted  for  a  time,  in  some 
longer,  in  others  shorter,  it  passes  into  one  of  depression  and 
maudlin  melancholy,  as  convulsion  passes  into  paralysis — the 
last  scene  of  all  being  one  of  dementia  and  stupor.  The  different 
stages  of  mental  disorder  are  compressed  into  a  short  period  of 
time  because  the  action  of  the  poison  is  quick  and  transitory ; 
we  have  only  to  spread  the  poisonous  action  over  years,  as  the 
regular  drunkard  does,  and  we  may  get  a  chronic  and  enduring 
insanity  in  which  the  above  described  scenes  are  more  slowly 
acted.  Or  if  death  cuts  short  the  career  of  the  individual,  and 
puts  a  stop  to  the  full  development  of  the  tragedy  in  his  life,  we 
may  still  not  be  disappointed  at  seeing  it  played  out  in  the  lives 
of  his  descendants ;  for  the  drunkenness  of  the  parent  sometimes 
observably  becomes  the  insanity  of  the  offspring,  which  there- 
upon, if  not  interfered  with,  goes  through  the  course  of  degene- 


i.J  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  229 

racy  already  described.  It  is  worth  while  to  take  note  here  how 
differently  alcohol  affects  different  people  according  to  their  tem- 
peraments, ever  bringing  forward  the  unconscious  real  nature  of 
the  man  :  of  one  it  makes  a  furious  maniac  for  the  time  being  ; 
another  it  makes  maudlin  and  melancholic ;  and  a  third  under 
its  influence  is  stupid  and  heavy  from  the  beginning.  So  it  is 
with  insanity  otherwise  caused :  the  particular  constitution  or 
temperament,  rather  than  the  exciting  cause  of  the  disease,  deter- 
mines the  form  which  the  madness  takes.  An  exact  differential 
pathology  would  involve  the  knowledge  of  what  constitutes 
individual  temperament. 

Many  other  poisons  besides  alcohol, — as  opium,  belladonna, 
Indian  hemp, — stimulate  and  ultimately  derange  the  function  of 
the  supreme  cerebral  cells.  It  is  deserving  of  remark  that  the  dif- 
ferent nervous  centres  of  the  body  manifest  elective  affinities  for 
particular  poisons  :  while  the  spinal  centres  have  a  special  affinity 
for  strychnine,  the  cerebral  centres  seem  to  be  unaffected  by  it ; 
belladonna,  on  the  other  hand,  seems  rather  to  depress  spinal 
activity,  but  produces  a  great  effect  upon  the  centres  of  conscious- 
ness, giving  rise  at  an  early  period  of  its  action  to  delirium 
characterised  by  extreme  delusions ;  and  Indian  hemp  concen- 
trates its  action  mainly  on  the  sensory  centres,  exciting  remark- 
able hallucinations.  That  medicinal  substances  do  display  these 
elective  affinities  is  a  proof,  at  any  rate,  that  there  are  important 
though  delicate  differences  in  the  constitution  or  composition  of 
the  different  nervous  centres,  notwithstanding  that  we  are  unable 
to  detect  the  nature  of  them.  It  may  be  also  that  there  is  shadowed 
out  in  these  different  effects  of  poisons  on  the  nervous  system  a 
means  which  may  ultimately  be  of  use  in  the  investigation  of 
the  constitution  of  the  latter.  Though  the  rapid  recovery  from 
their  effects  proves  that  the  combination  which  they  form  with 
nerve  element  is  temporary,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  with 
regard  to  them,  as  with  regard  to  alcohol,  that  the  nervous 
system,  when  repeatedly  exposed  to  their  poisonous  influence, 
acquires  a  disposition  to  irregular  or  morbid  action,  even  when 
they  are  not  present ;  so  that  more  or  less  delirium,  hallucinations, 
and  insanity  are  the  results  of  their  continued  abuse— they  are 
efficient  to  initiate  a  degeneracy  which  then  proceeds  of  itself. 

But  the  condition  of  the  blood  may  be  perverted  by  reason  of 


230  ON  TEH  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

something  bred  in  it,  or  by  reason  of  the  retention  in  it  of  some 
substance  which  should  rightly  be  excreted  from  it.  Without 
any  change  whatsoever  having  taken  place  in  his  external  rela- 
tions, the  presence  of  bile  in  his  blood  may  drive  any  one  to 
regard  his  surroundings  and  his  future  in  the  gloomiest  light 
imaginable ;  he  may  know  that  a  few  hours  ago  things  looked 
quite  differently,  and  may  believe  that  in  a  few  hours  more  they 
will  again  have  a  different  aspect,  yet  for  the  time  being  he  is 
the  victim  of  a  humour  which  he  cannot  withstand.  Philosophy 
is  of  no  avail  to  him ;  for  philosophy  cannot  remove  that  con- 
dition of.nervous  element  which  the  impure  blood  has  engendered, 
and  which  is  the  occasion  of  his  gloomy  feelings  and  painful 
conceptions.  Carry  this  morbid  state  of  nervous  element  to  a 
further  stage  of  degeneration,  there  ensues  the  genuine  melan- 
cholia of  insanity.  In  like  manner  the  presence  of  some  urinary 
product  in  the  blood  of  a  gouty  patient  gives  rise  to  an  irritability 
which  no  amount  of  mental  control  can  remove,  though  it  may 
succeed  sometimes  in  repressing  its  manifestations.  The  mental 
tone  being,  as  already  set  forth,  the  expression  of  a  physical 
condition  of  nervous  element,  is  beyond  conscious  determination, 
just  as  the  delirium  and  convulsions  of  the  patient  dying  from 
ursemic  poisoning  are  beyond  control.  It  can  admit  of  no 
question  that  every  degree  of  mental  disorder,  from  the  mildest 
feeling  of  melancholic  depression  to  the  extremest  fury  of  deli- 
rium, may  be  due  to  the  non-evacuation  from  the  blood  of  the 
waste  matters  of  the  tissues  ;  but  as  we  know  very  little  at 
present  of  the  nature  of  those  waste  products  of  the  retrograde 
metamorphosis,  and  of  the  different  transformations  which  they 
undergo  before  they  are  eliminated,  we  must  rest  content  with 
the  general  statement,  and  set  ourselves  in  practice  to  prosecute 
rigorous  inquiries  into  the  particular  instances.  The  irregulari- 
ties of  menstruation,  which  are  so  common  in  insanity,  are  of 
great  importance  in  regard  to  this  question :  the  return  of  the 
menses  at  their  due  season  not  unfrequently  heralds  recovery ; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  severe  exacerbations  of  epilepsy  and 
insanity  sometimes  coincide  with  the  menstrual  period.  In  one 
case  of  a  demented  epileptic  under  my  care,  the  fits  always  came 
on  at  the  time  of  menstruation,  and  continued  in  severe  form 
during  the  progress  of  that  function  ;  but  there  were  commonly 


i.]  ON  Tim  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  231 

no  fits  in  the  intervals :  on  the  other  hand,  many  cases  are  on 
record,  more  or  less  like  that  well-known  one  related  by  Esquirol, 
where  an  insane  girl,  whose  menses  had  ceased  for  some  time, 
recovered  her  senses  directly  they  began  to  flow. 

When  we  reflect  that  the  blood  is  itself  a  living,  developing 
fluid,  that, — "  burnished  with  a  living  splendour,"  it  circulates 
through  the  body,  supplying  the  material  for  the  nutrition  of 
the  various  tissues,  receiving  again  their  waste  matter  and 
carrying  it  to  those  parts  where  it  may  either  be  appropriated 
and  removed  by  nutrition  or  eliminated  by  secretion, — it  is  plain 
that  multitudinous  changes  are  continually  taking  place  in  its 
constitution  and  composition — that  its  existence  is  a  continued 
metastasis.  There  is  the  widest  possibility,  therefore,  of  ab- 
normal changes  in  some  of  the  manifold  processes  of  its  complex 
life  and  function,  such  as  may  generate  products  injurious  or 
fatal  to  the  nutrition  of  the  different  tissues.  The  blood  itself 
may  not  reach  its  proper  growth  and  development  by  reason  of 
some  defect  in  the  function  of  the  glands  that  minister  to  its 
formation,  or,  carrying  the  cause  still  further  back,  by  reason  of 
wretched  conditions  of  life ;  there  is  in  consequence  a  defective 
nutrition  generally,  as  in  scrofulous  persons,  and  the  nervous 
system  shares  in  the  general  delicacy  of  constitution,  so  that, 
though  quickly  impressible  and  lively  in  reaction,  it  is  irritable, 
feeble,  and  easily  exhausted.  In  the  condition  known  as  anse- 
mia,  we  have  an  observable  defect  in  the  blood  and  palpable 
nervous  suffering  in  consequence ;  headaches,  giddiness,  low 
spirits,  and  susceptibility  to  emotional  excitement  reveal  the 
morbid  effects.  Poverty  of  blood,  it  can  admit  of  no  doubt, 
plays  the  same  weighty  part  in  the  production  of  insanity  as  it 
does  in  the  production  of  other  nervous  diseases,  such  as  hysteria, 
chorea,  neuralgia,  and  even  epilepsy.  The  exhaustion  produced 
by  lactation  is  a  well-recognised  cause  of  mental  derangement ; 
and  a  great  loss  of  blood  during  childbirth  has  sometimes  been 
the  cause  of  an  outbreak  of  insanity.  But  while  we  can  thus 
detect  an  evil  so  manifest  as  a  great  loss  of  blood  or  a  deficiency 
of  iron  in  the  blood,  there  are  good  reasons  to  think  that  other 
graver  defects  in  its  constitution  or  development,  of  which  we 
can  give  no  account,  do  exist  and  give  rise  to  secondary  nervous 
degeneration.  It  is  in  this  way  probably  that  ill  conditions  of 


232  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

existence, — as  overcrowding,  bad  air,  insufficient  food,  intemper- 
ance,— lead  to  defects  of  nervous  development,  or  to  actual  arrest 
thereof,  and  thus  produce  mental  as  well  as  physical  deterioration 
of  the  race. 

There  is  no  want  of  evidence  that  organic  morbid  poisons, 
bred  in  the  organism  or  in  the  blood  itself,  may  act  in  the  most 
baneful  manner  upon  the  supreme  nervous  centres.  That  these 
organic  poisons  do  act  in  a  definite  manner  on  the  organic 
elements,  and  give  rise  to  definite  morbid  actions,  is  proved  by 
the  symptoms  of  such  diseases  as  syphilis  and  small-pox.  Now, 
the  general  laws  observable  in  the  actions  of  morbid  poisons 
appear  for  the  most  part  similar  to  those  which  govern  the 
action  of  medicinal  substances ;  and  as  the  Woorara  poison 
completely  paralyses  the  nerves  and  does  not  affect  the  muscles, 
or  as  strychnia  poisons  the  spinal  centres,  and  leaves  the  cere- 
bral centres  unaffected,  so  it  may  be  presumed  that  a  particular 
organic  virus  may  have  a  predominant  affinity  for  a  particular 
nervous  centre,  and  work  its  mischievous  work  there.  It  is 
certain  that  in  some  states  of  the  constitution  an  organic  virus 
is  generated  in  the  blood,  or  elsewhere  in  the  organism,  which 
almost  instantaneously  proves  fatal  to  the  life  of  nervous 
element — which  is,  indeed,  as  surely,  though  not  as  quickly, 
fatal  as  a  poisonous  dose  of  prussic  acid.  With  what  marvellous 
destructive  force  certain  morbid  materials  bred  in  the  blood,  or 
passing  into  it,  may  act,  is  shown,  as  Mr.  Paget  has  pointed 
out,  in  certain  cases  of  so-called  putrid  infection  in  which  the 
patient  dies  after  an  injury  or  an  operation  before  there  has 
been  time  to  feel  the  after-consequences,  or  in  some  cases 
of  malignant  typhus  where  the  virus  is  directly  fatal  to  nervous 
element  before  the  fever  has  had  time  to  develop  itself.  It  is 
easily  conceivable  that  a  virus  which  produces  fatal  results 
when  concentrated  may,  when  acting  with  less  intensity,  give 
rise  to  nervous  derangement  which  stops  short  of  death.  The 
syphilitic  virus  usually  affects  the  nervous  system  more  or  less 
severely  at  one  period  or  other  of  its  action;  but  in  some 
instances  it  appears  to  select  the  nervous  system  specially  for 
its  pernicious  influence,  or  to  concentrate  its  action  upon  it,  so 
as  to  produce  a  hopeless  insanity.  There  are  cases  on  record, 
again,  in  which  mental  derangement  has  appeared  as  the  inter- 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  233 

mittent  symptoms  of  ague ;  instead  of  the  usual  symptoms  the 
patient  has  had  an  intermittent  insanity  in  regular  tertian  or 
quartan  attacks,  and  has  been  cured  by  the  treatment  for  inter- 
mittent fever.*  Griesinger  directs  special  attention  to  cases  in 
which  mental  disorder  has  occurred  in  the  course  of  acute 
rheumatism,  the  swelling  of  the  joints  meanwhile  subsiding; 
and  Arnold  has  known  cases  of  people  subject  to  frequent  fits 
of  gout  who  have  had  .none  while  suffering  from  an  attack  of 
insanity.  The  viruses  of  acute  fevers,  as  typhus  and  typhoid, 
may  notably  act  in  the  most  positive  manner  on  the  supreme 
nervous  cells,  giving  rise  to  an  active  delirium  or  more  or 
less  enduring  insanity;  and  where  they  do  not  act  directly  at 
the  height  of  the  fever,  they  still  sometimes  predispose  to  an 
outbreak  of  insanity  during  the  decline  of  the  acute  disease. 
Not  only  may  a  morbid  poison  thus  attack  the  nervous  system, 
or  a  part  of  it,  but  it  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  a  particular 
virus  will  most  likely  produce  its  special  effects,  not  otherwise 
than  as  tea  and  coffee  commonly  produce  wakefulness  while 
opium  produces  sleep. 

The  earliest  and  mildest  mental  effect  by  which  a  perverted 
state  of  blood  declares  itself  is  not  in  the  production  of  positive 
delusion  or  of  incoherence  of  thought,  but  in  a  modification  of 
the  mental  tone.  Feelings  of  discomfort  or  depression,  of  irri- 
tability or  uneasiness,  testify  to  some  modification  of  the  statical 
condition  of  nervous  element ;  and  a  great  disposition  to  emo- 
tional subjectivity  is  the  psychical  manifestation  of  this  state. 
It  may  exist  in  different  degrees  of  intensity,  from  the  slight 
irritability  or  gloom  which  attends  upon  a  sluggish  liver,  or  the 

*  A  young  man  in  an  agueish  district  suffered  from  five  brief  attacks  of  mental 
derangement,  one  occurring  every  other  day.  The  attacks  began  with  an 
indescribable  feeling  of  pain  in  the  region  of  the  heart,  and  with  strong  pulsa- 
tions of  the  heart.  This  was  the  starting  point  of  the  delirium,  from  which  the 

patient  recovered  after  a  deep  sleep.     He  was  cured  by  quinine. A  strong 

peasant,  aged  30,  who  had  never  had  ague  though  he  lived  in  an  agueish  district, 
was  suddenly  attacked  with  insanity.  He  believed  himself  to  be  Jesus  Christ, 
and  those  near  him  to  be  witches,  and  acted  with  violence  towards  them.  His 
head  was  hot ;  his  eyes  were  red  and  wild  ;  his  pulse  was  quick  and  his  tongue 
white.  After  cupping  and  the  application  of  ice  to  the  head,  he  recovered,  and 
for  two  days  remained  quite  sound  in  mind.  On  the  fourth  day  however,  exactly 
at  the  same  time,  he  had  a  similar  attack,  and  again  a  third,  after  three  days 
more.  He  was  cured  by  quinine.— Die  Pathologic  und  Therapie  der  psychischen 
Krankheiten.  Von  Dr.  W.  Griesinger. 


234  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

greater  irritability  which  the  urea  in  the  blood  of  the  gouty 
subject  produces,  to  that  profound  depression  which  we  describe 
as  melancholia,  or  that  active  degeneration  of  function  which  we 
designate  mania.  Though  there  may  be  no  active  delusion,  the 
emotional  perversion  existing  by  itself,  yet  the  ideas  which  arise 
under  such  circumstances  do  not  fail  to  feel  the  influence  of  the 
morbid  feeling,  but  are  strongly  tinctured  by  it  ;  they  are  obscure, 
or  painful,  or,  at  any  rate,  not  faithfully  representative  of  external 
circumstances.  The  morbid  character  of  the  depression  lies,  not 
in  the  depression  itself,  which  would  be  natural  or  normal  so 
long  as  there  was  an  adequate  external  cause  of  it,  but  in  its 
existence  without  any  external  cause,  in  the  discord  between  the 
individual  and  his  circumstances.  But  as  there  is  an  irresistible 
disposition  in  the  mind  to  represent  its  feelings  as  qualities  of 
the  external  object,  as  in  all  our  mental  life  we  continually  make 
this  projection  outwards  of  our  subjective  states,  it  commonly 
happens  after  a  while  that  the  victim  of  an  internally-caused  emo- 
tional perversion  seeks  for  an  objective  cause  of  it,  and,  thinking 
to  find  one,  gets  a  delusion :  being  in  a  discord  with  the  external, 
he  establishes  an  equilibrium  between  himself  and  it  by  creation 
of  a  surrounding  in  harmony  with  his  inner  life.  The  form 
which  the  delusion  takes  may  be  a  natural  crystallization  or 
condensation,  so  to  speak,  of  the  particular  morbid  emotion 
which  prevails,  or  it  may  be  suggested,  as  it  often  is,  by  some 
prominent  external  event.  What  we  have  to  bear  in  mind  with 
regard  to  the  organic  nature  of  the  delusion  is,  that  a  series  of 
ideational  cells  have  now  entered  upon  the  habit  of  a  definite 
morbid  action;  that  the  general  commotion  of  nerve  element, 
which  the  emotional  disturbance  implied,  has  now  centred  in  a 
particular  form  of  diseased  action,  not  otherwise  than  as  general 
inflammatory  disturbance  of  some  part  of  the  organism  issues  in 
a  definite  morbid  growth  there.  For  although  a  temporary 
emotional  disturbance  produced  by  bad  blood  may  completely 
pass  away  with  the  purification  of  the  blood,  yet  the  prolonged 
continuance  or  frequent  recurrence  of  such  morbid  influence 
will  inevitably  end  in  the  ideational  nerve-cell,  as  elsewhere,  in 
chronic  morbid  action,  which,  once  established,  is  not  easily  got 
rid  of.  Thus,  then,  it  appears  that  the  first  effect  of  the  chronic 
action  of  impure  blood  is  to  produce  a  general  disturbance  of 


I.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  235 

the  psychical  tone  or  indefinite  morbid  emotion  ;  and  the  further 
effect  of  its  continued  action  is  to  engender  a  chronic  delusion 
of  some  kind — a  systematization  of  the  morbid  action.  But  a 
third  effect  of  its  more  acute  action,  as  witnessed  in  the  effects 
of  acute  fevers  and  of  certain  poisons,  is  to  produce  more  or  less 
active  delirium  and  general  incoherence  of  thought :  the  poison 
is  distributed  generally  through  the  supreme  centres  by  the 
circulation,  and,  acting  directly  upon  the  different  cells,  excites 
ideas  rapidly  and  without  order  or  coherence :  the  delirium  is 
not  systematic,  and  there  is  good  hope  of  its  passing  away.  A 
general  incoherence  equally  unsystematized,  but  which  never 
can  pass  away  save  with  life  itself,  is  the  natural  issue  of  long- 
continued  chronic  morbid  action  in  the  supreme  centres :  it  is 
the  chronic  dementia  following  continued  insanity,  and  marking 
mental  disorganization.  I  mention  it  here  in  order  to  render 
pathologically  intelligible  the  very  different  prognosis  in  acute 
dementia  from  that  in  chronic  dementia. 

It  is  before  all  things  necessary  to  keep  stedfastly  in  view 
that  the  relation  between  the  supreme  nervous  centres  and  the 
blood  is  fundamentally  of  the  same  kind  as  that  between  other 
parts  of  the  body  and  their  blood  supply,  and  that  the  disordered 
mental  phenomena  are  the  functional  indications  of  morbid 
organic  action.  Firmly  grasping  this  just  conception,  as  we  may 
do  by  calling  to  mind  the  mode  of  nutritive  action  in  other  parts 
of  the  body,  we  get  rid  of  the  notion  of  a  delusion  as  some 
abstract,  ideal,  and  incomprehensible  entity,  and  recognise  it  as 
the  definite  expression  of  a  certain  form  of  morbid  action  in 
certain  of  the  supreme  centres,  neither  more  nor  less  wonderful 
than  the  persistence  of  a  definite  morbid  action  in  any  other  organ. 
If  there  is  defective  or  disordered  nutrition  of  the  brain,  and  some 
striking  event  or  some  powerful  shock  produces  a  great  impression 
on  the  mind,  constraining  it  into  a  particular  form  of  activity — 
in  other  words,  engrossing  its  whole  energy  in  a  particular  gloomy 
reflection,  what  more  in  accordance  with  analogy  than  that  this 
should  take  on  a  chronic  morbid  action,  and  issue  in  the  pro- 
duction of  a  delusion  ?  Any  great  passion  in  the  sound  mind 
notably  calls  up  kindred  ideas,  which  thereupon  tend  to  keep  it 
up  ;  and  it  is  plain  that  the  morbid  exaggeration  of  this  natural 
process  must  lead  to  the  production  of  delusion. 


236  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

3.  Reflex  Irritation. —  Like  every  other  nervous  centre,  or 
like  any  other  part  of  the  organism,  the  supreme  cells  of  the 
ideational  centres  may  be  deranged  by  reason  of  a  morbid  cause 
of  irritation  in  some  other  part  of  the  body.  Why  such  morbid 
effect  should  be  produced  at  one  time  and  not  at  another,  or  in 
one  person  and  not  in  another,  it  is  impossible  to  say,  just  as  it 
is  impossible  to  explain  how  it  is  that  a  wound  in  the  hand  or 
elsewhere  at  one  time  gives  rise  to  tetanus  and  at  another  time 
to  no  such  desperate  consequence,  or  why  epilepsy  should  be 
caused  by  an  eccentric  irritation  in  one  case  and  not  in  another. 
"  A  fever,  delirium,  and  violent  convulsions,"  says  Dr.  Whytt, 
"  have  been  produced  by  a  pin  sticking  in  the  coats  of  the 
stomach  ;  and  worms  affecting  either  this  part  or  the  intestines 
occasion  a  surprising  variety  of  symptoms."*  These  effects 
were  of  old  attributed  to  a  sympathy  or  consent  of  parts,  terms 
which  were,  though  equally  void  of  any  real  explanation,  quite 
as  expressive  as  the  modern  reflex  irritation. 

Amongst  many  other  instances  which  might  be  quoted  in 
illustration  of  this  manner  of  pathological  action,  a  case  recorded 
by  Baron  Larrey  is  a  striking  example.  A  soldier,  who  had 
been  shot  in  the  abdomen,  had  a  fistulous  opening  on  the 
right  side,  which  passed  inwards  and  towards  the  left.  When  a 
sound  was  introduced  into  this  opening  and  made  to  touch  the 
deeper  parts,  immediately  singular  attacks  supervened:  first 
there  was  a  feeling  of  coldness  and  oppressive  pain,  then  a  con- 
vulsive contraction  of  the  abdomen  and  spasm  of  the  limbs  ; 
after  which  the  man  fell  into  a  sort  of  somnambulism,  and 
talked  incoherently,  this  stage  ending  after  about  thirty  minutes 
in  a  melancholy  depression  which  from  the  time  of  the  wound 
had  been  habitual.  Larrey  attributed  the  hypochondria  and  other 
nervous  symptoms  to  the  injury  which  the  caeliac  axis  had  suf- 
fered from  the  ball.  The  direct  effect  of  the  sympathetic  system 
upon  the  brain,  which  this  case  so  strikingly  illustrates,  Schroeder 
van  der  Kolk  once  verified  in  his  own  experience.!  After  great 
mental  exertion  and  an  unaccustomed  constipation  of  a  few 
days,  he  was  attacked  with  a  fever,  for  which  his  physician, 

*  Observations  oil  the  Nature,  Causes,  and  Cure  of  Nervous  Hypochondriacal 
or  Hysteric  Orders.  By  Robert  Whytt,  II.  D.  1765. 

"h  Die  Pathologic  und  Therapie  der  Geisteskrankheiten  auf  Anatomisch-Physi« 
ologischer  Grundkge.  Von  J.  L.  C.  Sehroeder  van  der  Eolk.  1863. 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  237 

deeming  it  nervous,  would  not  sanction  any  purging.  After  a 
continuance  of  the  fever  for  two  days,  hallucinations  of  vision 
occurred ;  he  saw  a  multitude  of  people  around  him,  although 
quite  conscious  that  they  were  only  phantasms.  These  continued 
for  three  days  and  increased,  until  he  got  a  thorough  evacuation 
of  a  quantity  of  hardened  fseces  from  his  bowels,  when  all  the 
morbid  phenomena  vanished  in  a  moment.  A  man  who  came 
under  my  observation,  having  suffered  for  more  than  a 
year  with  profound  melancholia,  and  who  had  become  greatly 
emaciated,  passing  at  intervals  pieces  of  tape-worm,  recovered 
almost  immediately  after  the  expulsion  of  the  whole  of  the  worm 
by  means  of  a  dose  of  the  oil  of  male  fern.*  Many  like  cases 
are  on  record  in  medical  books  ;  but  it  is  not  necessary  to  mul- 
tiply instances  in  order  to  prove  that  morbid  action  in  some  part 
or  organ  of  the  body  may  be  the  cause  .of  secondary  functional 
and  organic  disorder  of  the  supreme  nervous  centres.  It  may  be 
well  to  add,  however,  that  affections  of  the  uterus  and  its  ap- 
pendages afford  notable  examples  of  a  powerful  sympathetic 
action  upon  the  brain,  and  not  unfrequently  play  an  important 
part  in  the  production  of  insanity,  especially  of  melancholia  M. 
Azam  investigated  the  histories  of  seven  cases  of  lypemania  with 
suicidal  tendencies,  of  one  case  of  simple  lypemania  with  dan- 
gerous tendencies,  and  of  one  case  ofhysteromania.  There  were 
granulations  of  the  neck  of  the  uterus  in  five  cases  ;  there  was 
ante  version  of  the  uterus,  with  congestion  of  its  neck  and  ulce- 
ration  of  the  inferior  lip,  in  one  case  ;  in  three  cases  there  were 
fungous  and  fibrous  growths  of  the  uterus ;  and  in  one  case 
there  was  painful  engorgement  of  it  with  leucorrhcea.  Schroeder 
van  der  Kolk  relates  the  case  of  a  woman  profoundly  melancholic, 
who  suffered  at  the  same  time  from  prolapsus  uteri,  and  in  whom 
the  melancholia  used  to  disappear  directly  the  uterus  was  re- 
stored to  its  proper  place ;  Flemming  relates  two  similar  cases 
in  which  the  melancholia  was  cured  by  the  use  of  a  pessary,  in 
one  of  them  regularly  returning  whenever  the  pessary  was  re- 
moved ;  and  I  have  in  one  instance  seen  severe  melancholia  of 

*  Griesinger  has  seen  .deep  melancholia  arise  iu  an  hysterical  woman  after 
accidental  wound  of  the  eye  by  a  splinter.  Herzog  relates  an  instance  of  insanity 
after  the  operation  for  strabismus.  Jb'rdens  tells  of  a  boy  who  was  attacked 
with  furious  insanity  in  consequence  of  a  splinter  of  glass  in  the  sole  of  his  foot, 
which  disappeared  directly  it  was  removed. — Op.  cit.t  p.  183. 


23S  OW  THE  CAUSES  OF  IXSJXnT.  [CHAT. 

two  years1  duration  disappear  after  the  cure  of  a  prolapsus  uteri. 
Instances  are  on  record  in  which  a  woman  has  regularly  become 
jnsaiM*  daring  each  pregnancy ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  GuisLain 
and  Griesinger  mention  a  case  respectively  in  which  insanity 
disappeared  daring  pregnancy,  the  patient  at  that  time  only 
being  rational.*  These  are  striking  examples  of  a  mode  of  reflex 
action  which  is  a  continual  function  of  the  organic  life  both  in 
health  and  in  disease.  Perhaps  the  best  opportunity  of  studying 
the  early  stages  in  the  genesis  of  melancholia  is  afforded  by  the 
mfrnfai  depression  that  commonly  accompanies  certain  uterine 
diseases.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  equally  striking  evidence 
of  this  intimate  sympathy  of  parts  in  the  fact  that  morbid  states 
of  organs  favouring  a  certain  mental  disposition  may  unquestion- 
ably be  in  turn  caused  by  the  latter  when  it  is  primary  and  of 


Perhaps  the  most  instructive  example  of  the  intimate  organic 
sympathy  of  parts  is  afforded  by  the  great  mental  revolution 
which  accompanies  the  development  of  the  sexual  system  at 
puberty — when  there  occurs,  as  Goethe  aptly  expresses  i: 
awakening  of  sensual  impulses  which  clothe  themselves  in 
mental  forms,  of  mental  necessities  which  clothe  themselves  in 
sensual  images.2"  The  great  moral  commotion  produced  at  this 
period. is  the  cause  of  an  unstable  equilibrium  of  mind,  which, 
if  hereditary  predisposition  exist,  may,  without  further  auxiliary 
cause,  issue  in  insanity.  In  any  case  it  constitutes  a  frame  of 
mind  favourable  to  the  action,  of  other  causes  of  mental  de- 
rangement 

It  is  uncertain  whether  the  puerperal  state  acts  as  the  occa- 
sional cause  of  a  -mxmarsA  outbreak  by  this  kind  of  sympathetic 
action,  or  whether  it  acts  in  some  other  way ;  but  there  can  be 
no  doubt  of  the  fact  that  a  woman  is  sometimes  attacked  with 
mental  alienation  daring  delivery,  and  that  her  child  may  fall  a 
victim  to  her  frenzy.  This  form  of  puerperal  insanity  is  different 

*  Shew*  relates  the  history  of  a  pregnaat  feinale,  in  whom  the  sight  of  the 
bare  ana  of  a  baker  excited  so  great  a  desire  to  bite  and  devour  it;  that  she 
compelled  her  fc»J»»J  to  offer  money  to  Ike  baker  to  allow  her  only  a  bite  or 
two  fins*  his  ana.  He  mralkm*  another  preg&ant  frmilr,  who  had  such  an 
ngeat  done  to  eat  the  flesh  of  her  husband,  that  she  killed  him  and  pickkdthe 
fled,  that  it  might  serve  for  several  banquets.— Prochaska  on  the  A'frvotu 
.V*:.:  •  ?;••-  ^:-  ::--^-:--- 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  239 

in  regard  of  causation  from  that  which  occurs  a  few  days  after 
delivery,  and  which  is  then  probably  due  to  blood-poisoning  ;  and 
more  different  still  from  that  mental  disorder  occurring  some 
weeks  or  months  after,  and  due  seemingly  to  the  exhaustion  pro- 
duced by  lactation,  together  with  depressing  moral  influences. 

The  earliest  and  mildest  effect  of  sympathetic  morbid  action 
will  be,  as  it  is  with  the  effect  of  vitiated  blood,  to  produce  a 
modification  of  the  tone  of  nervous  element,  which  is  functionally 
manifest  in  disordered  emotion.  But  the  continued  operation  of 
the  morbid  cause  will  be  apt  to  lead  to  a  systematized  disorder 
in  the  supreme  cerebral  centres  :  in  other  words,  to  the  produc- 
tion of  a  delusion  or  of  a  definite  derangement  of  thought,  which 
then  is  not  always  without  discoverable  relation  to  the  primary 
morbid  cause.  When,  for  example,  a  woman  with  morbid  irrita- 
tion of  the  sexual  organs  has  salacious  delusions,  or  with  uterine 
or  ovarian  disease  believes  herself  with  child  by  the  Holy  Ghost 
or  other  supernatural  means,  the  secondary  derangement  of  the 
cerebral  centres  testifies  to  the  special  effect  of  the  particular 
diseased  organ ;  and  when  the  disordered  action  forces  itself  into 
consciousness,  the  interpretation  given  of  it  in  the  delusion  wit- 
nesses to  the  nature  of  the  primary  morbid  cause.  There  is  the 
most  perfect  harmony,  the  most  intimate  connexion  or  sympathy, 
between  the  different  organs  of  the  body  as  the  expression  of  its 
organic  life — a  unity  of  the  organism  beneath  consciousness;  and 
the  brain  is  quite  aware  that  the  body  has  a  liver  or  a  stomach, 
and  feels  the  effects  of  disorder  in  any  one  of  the  organs,  without 
declaring  it  directly  in  consciousness.  This  unconscious,  but  not 
unimportant,  cerebral  activity,  which  is  the  expression  of  the 
organic  sympathies  of  the  brain,  cannot  fail,  when  rightly  appre- 
ciated, to  teach  the  lesson,  already  much  insisted  on,  that  every 
organic  motion,  visible  or  invisible,  sensible  or  insensible,  minis- 
traut  to  the  noblest  purposes  or  to  the  humblest  aims,  does  not 
pass  away  issueless,  but  has  its  due  effect  upon  the  whole,  and 
thrills  throughout  the  most  complex  recesses  of  the  mental  life.* 

"  Man  is  all  symmetric, 
Full  of  proportion  one  limb  to  another, 
And  all  to  all  the  world  besides, 
Each  part  calls  the  furthest  brother. 
For  head  with  foot  hath  private  amity, 
And  both  with  moon  and  tides.  "—George  Herbert. 


240  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

Though,  the  morbid  sympathetic  action  of  a  diseased  organ 
ftpon  the  brain  may  be  very  considerable  without  any  definite 
affection  of  consciousness,  yet  when  it  reaches  a  certain  intensity, 
or  when  it  is  long  continued,  the  effect  thrusts  itself  into  con- 
sciousness, just  as  physiologically  the  idea  does  when  its  energy 
reaches  a  certain  tension — declaring  itself  in  the  sensational 
centres  by  pain  or  some  more  special  anomalous  feeling,  and  in 
the  cognitional  centres  by  emotional  perversion  or  actual  delu- 
sion. It  often  happens  that  no  information  is  given  until  the 
primary  and  secondary  mischief  are  far  advanced,  and  it  is  then 
only  given  indirectly ;  for  while  there  is  entire  unconsciousness 
of  the  primary  disease  in  the  distant  organ,  and  an  entire  un- 
consciousness of  the  secondary  morbid  action  in  the  brain,  the 
effect  may  nevertheless  be  positively  attested  by  melancholia, 
delusion,  or  some  other  form  of  mental  disorder.  Esquirol  gra- 
phically tells  the  story  of  a  woman  who  thought'  she  had  in  her 
belly  the  whole  tribe  of  apostles,  prophets,  and  martyrs,  and 
who,  when  her  pains  were  more  than  usual,  railed  at  them  for 
their  greater  activity.  After  death,  her  intestines  were  found 
glued  together  by  a  chronic  peritonitis.  I  have  recently  seen  a 
patient  suffering  from  chronic  insanity,  who  fancies  that  he  has 
got  a  man  in  his  inside,  and  who,  when  his  bowels  get  much 
constipated,  as  they  are  apt  to  do,  makes  the  most  desperate 
attempts,  by  vomiting  and  otherwise,  to  get  rid  of  him.  After  a 
purgative,  however,  he  is  quite  comfortable  for  a  time,  and  his 
delusion  subsides  into  the  background.  In  the  insanity  attended 
with  phthisis  there  are  often  delusions  of  suspicion  which  appear 
to  have  their  foundation  in  the  anomalous  feeling  incident  to 
the  advance  of  the  tubercle  :  one  such  patient  under  my  care 
fancied  that  he  was  maliciously  played  upon  by  secret  fire,  inter- 
preting in  this  way  the  actual  increase  of  bodily  temperature 
which  occurs  during  the  progress  of  phthisis  ;  he  also  imagined 
that  a  filthy  disease  had  been  produced  in  his  mouth,  the  delu- 
sion probably  having  its  origin  in  the  perversion  of  smell  or 
taste  resulting  from  the  disease.  Not  only  is  the  remote  patho- 
logical effect  of  a  diseased  organ  thus  evinced  by  the  occurrence 
of  some  form  of  insanity,  but,  as  already  pointed  out,  a  special 
effect  of  the  particular  morbid  organ  may  be  revealed  in  the 
character  of  the  delusion  engendered.  It  is  by  virtue  of  this 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  241 

sympathetic  action  that  dreams  sometimes  have  a  truly  prophetic 
character  in  regard  of  certain  bodily  affections,  the  early  indica- 
tions of  which  have  not  been  sufficiently  marked  to  awaken  any 
attention  during  the  mental  activity  of  the  day,  or  to  do  "more 
than  produce  an  obscure  and  formless  feeling  of  discomfort,  but 
which  nevertheless  declare  themselves  in  the  mental  action  of 
dreaming,  when  other  impressions  are  shut  out.  When  the 
disease  ultimately  declares  itself  distinctly  in  our  waking  con- 
sciousness, then  the  prophetic  dream,  the  forewarning,  is  recalled 
to  mind  with  wonder.  After  all,  however,  the  most  striking 

y  *  O 

examples  of  this  kind  of  action  in  its  physiological  form  are  met 
with  in  the  marvellous  creations  of  dreams  originating  in  states 
of  the  sexual  organs* — "  tensio  phalli  vis&  muliere  nudti,  etiam 
in  insomnio" — these  illustrating  admirably  the  close  sympathy 
which  prevails ;  while  numerous  examples  of  this  kind  of  action 
in  its  pathological  form  are  furnished  by  the  salacious  delusions 
of  certain  of  the  insane  in  whom  there  is  derangement  of  the 
sexual  system.  In  every  large  asylum  are  to  be  met  women 
who  believe  themselves  to  be  visited  every  night  by  their  lovers, 
or  violently  ravished  in  their  sleep  ;  and  in  some  of  these,  as  in 
St.  Catherine  de  Sienne  and  St.  Theresa,  a  religious  ecstasy  is 
united  with  their  salacious  delusions.  Indeed,  a  religious  fana- 
ticism carried  to  a  morbid  degree  is  not  seldom  accompanied  by 
a  corresponding  morbid  lewdness ;  while  religious  feeling  of  a 
less  extreme  kind  in  some  women,  especially  certain  unmarried 
and  childless  women,  is  very  much  a  uterine  affection. 

Between  the  organic  feelings  just  considered,  the  vital  senses, 
as  they  are  sometimes  called,  and  the  lower  special  senses,  there 
exist  the  closest  relations ;  in  truth,  they  run  insensibly  into 
one  another.  Thus  the  digestive  organs  have  the  closest  sym- 
pathy with  the  sense  of  taste,  as  we  observe  in  the  bad  taste 
accompanying  indigestion,  and  especially  perhaps  in  the  avoid- 
ance of  poisonous  matters  by  animals  ;  the  respiratory  organs 
and  the  sense  of  smell  are  in  like  manner  intimately  associated  ; 
and  the  sense  of  touch  has  close  relations  with  the  ccensesthesis. 
In  insanity  we  find  these  physiological  relations  become  some- 

*  "And  as  love  and  beauty  stir  up  heat  in  other  organs,  so  heat  in  the  some 
organs,  from  -whatever  it  proceeds,  often  causeth  desire  and  the  image  of  an 
unresisting  beauty." 

17 


242  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

times  the  occasions  of  delusions :  derangement  of  the  digestive 
organs,  perverting  the  taste,  gives  rise  to  the  delusion  that  the 
food  is  poisoned  ;  disease  in  the  respiratory  organs  is  sometimes 
the  cause  of  disagreeable  subjective  smells,  which  are  thereupon 
attributed  to  an  objective  cause,  such  as  the  presence  of  a  dead 
body  in  the  room  ;  and  more-  or  less  loss  or  perversion  of  sensi- 
bility in  the  skin,  which  is  not  uncommon  amongst  the  insane, 
is  frequently  the  occasion  of  extravagant  delusions.  A  woman 
whose  case  Esquirol  tells,  had  complete  anaesthesia  of  the  surface 
of  the  skin :  she  believed  that  the  devil  had  carried  off  her 
body.  A  soldier  who  was  severely  wounded  at  the  battle  of 
Austerlitz  considered  himself  dead  from  that  time :  if  he  were 
asked  how  he  was,  he  invariably  replied,  that  "Lambert  no  longer 
lives ;  a  cannon-ball  carried  him  away  at  Austerlitz.  "What 
you  see  here  is  not  Lambert,  but  a  badly  imitated  machine," — 
which  he  failed  not  to  speak  of  as  it.  The  sensibility  of  his 
skin  was  lost.  A  striking  instance  of  delusion  in  connexion 
with  defective  sensibility  occurred  in  an  amiable  and  amusing 
patient  who  was  under  my  care  suffering  from  general  paralysis. 
As  the  disease  approached  its  end,  the  end  of  life,  he  had  severe 
epileptiform  convulsions,  which  latterly  affected  the  left  side 
only,  and  finally  resulted  in  paralysis  of  that  side.  But,  though 
the  power  of  movement  and  feeling  were  entirely  gone,  there 
were  frequent  spasmodic  twitchings  of  the  muscles  and  con- 
vulsive contractions  so  strong  as  to  raise  the  arm  and  leg  of  the 
paralysed  side  from  the  bed.  The  poor  man  had  the  most  sin- 
gular delusions  in  regard  to  these  movements  :  he  thought  that 
another  patient,  who  was  perfectly  demented  and  harmless,  had 
got  hold  of  him  and  was  tormenting  him,  and  accordingly,  with- 
out real  anger,  but  with  an  energy  of  language  that  was  habitual 
to  him,  he  thus  soliloquized  aloud: — "What  a  power  that  damned 
fellow  has  over  me !"  Then  after  a  severe  convulsion, — "  He  has 
got  me  round  the  neck,  and  you  dare  not  touch  him,  not  one  of 
you.  Oh  !  but  it  is  a  burning  shame  to  let  a  poor  fellow  be 
murdered  in  this  way  in  a  public  institution.  It's  that  boy  does 
this  to  me."  Told  that  he  was  mistaken,  he  replied, — "  You  may 
as  well  call  me  a  liar  at  once  :  he  has  got  me  round  the  neck  and 
he  has  me  tight.  Oh !  it  is  a  damned  shame  to  treat  me  in  this 
way — the  quietest  man  in  the  house."  Then  after  a  while, — 


L]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  243 

"  It's  a  strange  power  these  lunatics  have  over  one.  That  boy 
is  playing  the  devil  with  me  :  he  stinks  worse  than  a  polecat : 
he'll  take  my  life,  sure  enough."  And  so  on  continually,  until 
the  stupor  of  death  overpowered  him. 

Laudably  anxious  to  give  due  weight  to  defects  of  sensibility 
in  insanity,  Griesinger  has  made  five  groups  of  mental  disorder 
connected  with  different  anomalies  of  sensibility,  and  more  fre- 
quently than  not  actually  dependent  upon  them.  The  first  of 
these  is  the  proecordial  form,  where  there  are  morbid  sensation, 
sense  of  pressure,  or  pain  about  the  epigastrium,  from  which 
follow  fear  and  mental  anguish,  with  corresponding  ideas  and 
habits  of  thought.  The  second  is  the  vertiginous  form,  in  which 
some  anomaly  of  muscular  sensibility  exists.  In  the  third, 
which  he  calls  the  parenthetical  form,  there  are  anomalous  sen- 
sations in  different  parts  of  the  body,  attributed  by  the  patients 
commonly  to  external  machinations.  The  fourth  is  the  ances- 
tlutic  form,  in  which  absence  of  sensibility  is  often  the  cause  of 
self-mutilation.  Lastly,  there  is  the  hallucinatory  form,  which 
obviously  needs  no  explanation  here.  All  that  it  seems  im- 
portant to  say  further  is,  that  these  pathological  phenomena 
confirm  in  a  striking  manner  the  observations  made  in  the  First 
Part  of  this  work  concerning  the  comprehension  in  the  mental 
life  of  the  whole  bodily  life. 

The  centre  of  morbid  irritation  which  is  so  apt  at  times  to 
give  rise  to  secondary  disorder  by  reflex  or  sympathetic  action 
need  not  be  in  some  distant  organ  ;  it  may  be  in  the  brain 
itself.  A  tumour,  abscess,  or  local  softening  in  the  brain,  may 
nowise  interfere  with  the  mental  operations  at  one  time,  while 
at  another  time  it  produces  the  gravest  disorder  of  them  ;  and  it 
is  not  uncommon  in  abscess  of  the  brain  for  the  symptoms  of 
mental  derangement,  when  there  are  any,  to  disappear  entirely 
for  a  time,  and  then  to  return  suddenly  in  all  their  gravity. 
When  the  motor,  sensory,  and  ideational  centres  are  not  directly 
implicated  in  the  disease,  they  may  continue  their  functions  in 
spite  of  it,  and  it  does  accordingly  happen  that  they  sometimes 
do  so  even  when  there  is  the  most  serious  mischief  going  on 
in  the  brain ;  but  they  may  at  any  moment  be  affected  by  a 
sympathetic  or  reflex  action,  and  a  secondary  abolition  or 
derangement  of  function  thus  supervene  without  warning. 


244  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

Instances  now  and  then  occur  in  which  a  sudden  loss  of  con- 
sciousness, or  a  sudden  incoherence,  or  sudden  mania,  or  even 
sudden  death,  takes  place  where  no  premonitory  symptoms  have 
indicated  grave  local  disease  of  the  brain. 

Furthermore  it  would  appear  that  a  limited  disorder  of  the 
ideational  cells,  such  as  is  functionally  manifest  in  the  fixed 
delusions  of  the  so-called  monomaniac,  will  not  usually  remain 
without  some  effect  upon  the  other  elements  in  the  supreme 
centres.  So  delicately  sympathetic  and  sensitive  as  nerve 
element  is,  it  is  hard  to  conceive  it  possible  that  a  centre  of 
morbid  action  should  not,  by  direct  or  by  reflex  action,  affect 
neighbouring  parts  not  immediately  involved  in  the  disease.  As 
a  matter  of  observation  it  is  certain  that  a  greater  or  less  dis- 
turbance of  the  tone,  of  the  whole  mind  does  commonly  accompany 
the  limited  delusions  of  a  partial  insanity ;  in  fact,  the  condition 
of  things  is  that  which  has  already  been  described  as  the  first 
stage  of  the  affection  of  mind  by  other  causes  of  its  derangement, 
namely,  a  modification  of  the  mental  tone.  This  baneful  effect 
of  a  limited  local  disorder  is  in  strict  accordance  with  the 
analogy  of  what  we  observe  elsewhere.  Hereafter  we  shall 
have  occasion  to  describe  instances  of  the  sudden  and  entire 
transference  of  active  disorder  of  one  nervous  centre  to  another ; 
for,  as  Dr.  Darwin  long  ago  observed,  "  in  some  convulsive 
diseases  a  delirium  or  insanity  supervenes  and  the  convulsions 
cease ;  and,  conversely,  the  convulsions  shall  supervene  and  the 
delirium  cease." 

It  is  necessary  here,  as  in  the  spinal,  sensory,  and  motor 
centres,  to  distinguish  between  the  degrees  of  secondary  patho- 
logical disturbance  to  which  a  morbid  cause  may  give  rise.  The 
sudden  way  in  which  extreme  mental  symptoms  appear,  and  the 
equally  sudden  way  in  which  they  sometimes  disappear,  as  in 
abscess  of  the  brain,  prove  that  extreme  derangement  may  be 
what  is  called  functional ;  for  it  is  impossible  to  suppose  that 
serious  organic  change  has  existed  in  such  cases.  Although, 
therefore,  the  functional  disorder  necessarily  implies  a  molecular 
change  of  some  kind  in  the  nervous  element,  the  change  may  be 
assumed  to  be  one  affecting  the  polar  molecules,  such  as  the 
experiments  of  Du  Bois  Eeyrnond  and  others  have  proved  may 
rapidly  appear  and  rapidly  disappear.  The  induction  of  recog- 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  245 

nisable  temporary  changes  in  the  physical  constitution  and 
function  by  experiments  certainly  warrants  the  belief  in  similar 
modifications  by  causes  which  are  not  artificially  produced,  but 
which  are  just  as  abnormal  as  if  they  were  artificial.  This 
probable  modification  of  the  polar  relations  of  nervous  element, 
which  disappears  with  the  removal  of  the  cause,  will  not  fail,  if 
too  great  or  too  prolonged,  to  degenerate  into  actual  nutritive 
change  and  structural  disease,  just  as  an  emotion  which  observ- 
ably often  alters  a  secretion  temporarily  may,  when  long  enduring, 
lead  to  actual  nutritive  change  in  the  organ.  The  longer  a 
functional  derangement  is  allowed  to  continue,  the  more  danger 
is  there  of  structural  disease  ;  and  this  serious  change  once  defi- 
nitely established,  the  removal  of  the  primary  morbid  cause  will 
not  suffice  to  remove  an  effect  which  has  now  become  an  inde- 
pendently acting  cause. 

4.  Excessive  Functional  Activity. — As  the  manifestation  of 
function  is  the  waste  of  matter,  it  is  obvious  that,  if  the  due 
intervals  of  periodical  rest  be  not  allowed  for  the  restoration  of 
the  statical  equilibrium  of  nervous  element,  degeneration  of  it 
must  take  place  as  surely  as  if  it  were  directly  injured  by  a 
morbid  poison  or  a  mechanical  or  chemical  irritant.  It  is  sleep 
which  thus  knits  up  the  ravelled  structure  of  nervous  element ; 
for,  during  sleep,  organic  assimilation  is  restoring  as  statical 
force  the  power  which  has  been  expended  in  functional  energy. 
The  strongest  mind,  if  continually  overworked,  will  inevitably 
break  down ;  and  one  of  the  first  symptoms  that  foreshadows 
the  coming  mischief  is  sleeplessness.  That  which  should  heal 
the  breach  is  rendered  impossible  by  the  extent  of  the  breach. 
Like  Hamlet,  according  to  Polonius's  fruitful  imagination,  the 
individual  falls  into  a  sadness,  thence  into  a  watch,  thence  into 
a  lightness,  and,  by  this  declension,  into  the  madness  wherein  he 
finally  raves.  To  provoke  repose  in  him  is  the  first  condition  of 
restoration  ;  the  power  of  it  often  closing  the  "  eye  of  anguish," 
and  curing  the  "  great  breach  in  the  abused  nature  "  of  nervous 
element. 

It  is,  however,  when  intellectual  activity  is  accompanied  with 
great  emotional  agitation  that  it  is  most  enervating — when  the 
mind  is  the  theatre  of  great  passions  that  its  energy  is  soonest 
exhausted.  What  has  already  been  said  as  to  the  instability  of 


246  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

nervous  element  which  a  great  emotional  aptitude  implies,  will 
enable  us  to  understand  how  this  destructive  effect  is  worked 
out.  When  an  exceedingly  painful  event  produces  great  sorrow, 
or  a  critical  and  uncertain  event  great  anxiety,  the  mind  is 
undergoing  a  passion  or  suffering  ;  there  is  not  an  equilibrium 
between  the  internal  life  and  the  external  circumstances ;  and 
until  the  mind  is  able  duly  to  react,  the  passion  must  continue, 
or,  in  other  words,  the  wear  and  tear  of  nervous  element  must 
go  on.  Painful  emotion  is  in  reality  psychical  pain  ;  and  pain 
here,  as  elsewhere,  is  the  outcry  of  suffering  organic  element — 
a  prayer  for  deliverance  and  rest.  The  same  objects  or  events 
do  notably  produce  very  different  impressions  upon  the  mind 
according  to  the  condition  of  it  at  the  time — according  as  some- 
thing pleasant  or  something  unpleasant  has  just  happened.  If 
there  exist  a  temporary  depression  of  the  psychical  tone  by 
reason  of  some  misfortune  that  has  happened,  then  an  event, 
which  under  better  auspices  would  have  been  indifferent,  will 
excite  painful  emotion,  and,  calling  up  congenial  ideas  of  a 
gloomy  kind,  continue  and  add  to  the  mental  suffering,  just  as 
reflex  action  increased  by  a  morbid  cause  will  in  turn  sometimes 
aggravate  the  original  disorder.  If  there  be  a  lasting  depression 
of  the  psychical  tone  by  reason  of  some  morbid  cause,  then  every 
event  is  apt  to  aggravate  the  suffering,  and  one  particularly  un- 
favourable event,  or  a  series  of  painful  events,  may  lead  to  the 
degeneration  of  insanity.  After  a  piece  of  good  news,  or  after 
a  man  has  just  drunk  a  glass  of  sound  wine,  the  psychical  tone 
is  such  that  there  is  a  direct  and  adequate  reaction  to  an  un- 
favourable impression,  and  the  individual  will  not  suffer.  Herein 
the  supreme  centres  of  thought  do  not  differ  from  the  inferior 
nervous  centres  ;  when  the  spinal  centres  are  exhausted,  excita- 
bility is  increased,  and  an  impression  which  under  bettei 
auspices  would  have  produced  no  effect  gives  rise  to  degenerate 
activity  that  displays  itself  in  spasmodic  movements — an  ex- 
plosion not  unlike  that  which  in  the  higher  centre  is  manifest 
as  emotion,  or  as  an  ebullition  of  passion.  Excess  is,  however, 
a  relative  term ;  and  a  stress  of  function  which  would  be 
nothing  more  than  normal  to  a  powerful  well-ordered  mind,  and 
conducive  to  its  health,  might  be  fatal  to  the  stability  of  a  feeble 
and  ill-regulated  mind  in  which  feeling  habitually  overswayed 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  247 

reason,  or  even  to  that  of  a  strong  mind  temporarily  prostrate. 
Thus  it  is  that  in  examining  into  the  causation  of  insanity  in 
any  case  it  is  not  sufficient  to  investigate  only  the  series  of 
influences  to  which  the  individual  has  been  subjected,  but  it 
is  necessary  also  to  ascertain  what  capacity  at  the  time  he  had 
of  bearing  them. 

It  is  evident  from  the  foregoing  reflections  that,  from  a  patho- 
logical point  of  view,  the  so-called  moral  causes  of  insanity  may 
properly  fall  under  the  head  of  excessive  stimulation  or  exces- 
sive functional  action  :  the  mind  is  subject  to  a  stress  beyond 
what  it  is  able  to  bear.  Of  necessity  the  depressing  passions  are 
the  most  efficient  causes  of  exhaustion  and  consequent  disease  : 
grief,  religious  anxiety,  disappointed  affection  or  ambition,  the 
wounds  of  an  exaggerated  self-love,  and,  above  all  perhaps,  the 
painful  feeling  of  being  unequal  to  responsibilities,  or  other  like 
conditions  of  mental  agitation  and  suffering,  are  most  apt  to 
reach  a  violence  of  action  by  which  the  equilibrium  is  lost.  It 
is  especially  when  the  individual  has  by  a  long  concentration  of 
thought,  affection,  and  desire  on  a  certain  aim  or  object,  grown 
into  definite  relations  with  regard  to  it,  and  made  it,  as  it  were, 
a  part  of  the  inner  life,  that  a  sudden  and  entire  change,  shatter- 
ing long  cherished  hopes,  is  most  likely  to  produce  insanity ;  for 
what  is  more  fraught  with  danger  to  the  stability  of  the  strongest 
mind  than  a  sudden  great  change  in  external  circumstances, 
without  the  inner  life  having  been  gradually  adapted  thereto  ? 
Thence  it  comes  that  a  great  exaltation  of  fortune,  as  well  as  a 
great  affliction,  rarely  fails  to  affect  for  a  tim  the  strongest  head, 
and  sometimes  quite  overturns  a  weak  on  the  strong  mind 
succeeding  after  a  time  in  establishing  an  equilibrium  between 
itself  and  its  new  surroundings,  which  tha  feeble  mind  cannot 
do.  When  depressing  passion  does  not  act  directly  as  the  cause 
of  a  sudden  outbreak  of  insanity,  it  may  still  act  mischievously 
by  its  long-continued  evil  influence  on  the  organic  life,  and  thus 
finally  produce  mental  derangement.  It  is  not  often  that  men 
become  insane,  though  they  sometimes  die,  from  excess  of  joy ; 
and  when  one  of  the  expansive  passions,  as  ambition,  religious 
exaltation,  overweening  vanity  in  any  of  its  Protean  forms,  leads 
to  mental  derangement,  it  does  not,  like  a  painful  passion,  act 
directly  as  the  cause  of  an  outbreak,  or  indirectly  by  producing 


248  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

organic  disorder  and  subsequent  insanity ;  but  it  exhibits  its 
effects  slowly  as  a  gradual  development  or  exaggeration  of  a 
particular  vice  of  character. 

A  fatal  drain  upon  the  vitality  of  the  higher  nervous  centres 
may  in  certain  cases  be  produced  by  the  excessive  exercise  of  a 
physical  function — by  an  excessive  sexual  indulgence,  or  by 
continued  self-abuse.  Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  either 
of  these  causes  will  produce  an  enervation  of  nervous  element 
which,  if  the  exhausting  vice  be  continued,  passes  by  a  further 
declension  into  degeneration  and  actual  destruction  thereof.  The 
flying  pains  and  heaviness  in  the  limbs,  and  the  startings  of  the 
muscles,  which  follow  an  occasional  sexual  excess,  are  signs  of 
instability  of  nervous  element  in  the  spinal  centres,  which,  if 
the  cause  is  in  continual  operation,  may  end  in  inflammation 
and  softening  of  the  cord,  and  consequent  paralysis.  Nor  do  the 
supreme  centres  always  escape  :  the  habit  of  self-abuse  notably 
gives  rise  to  a  particular  and  disagreeable  form  of  insanity,  cha- 
racterised by  intense  self-feeling  and  conceit,  extreme  perversion 
of  feeling,  and  corresponding  derangement  of  thought,  in  the 
earlier  stages  ;  and,  later,  by  failure  of  intelligence,  nocturnal 
hallucinations,  and  suicidal  or  homicidal  propensities.  The 
mental  symptoms  of  general  paralysis — a  disease  notably  pro- 
duced sometimes  by  sexual  excess — betray  a  degenerate  con- 
dition of  nerve  element  in  the  higher  centres,  which  is  the 
counterpart  of  that  which  in  the  lower  centres  is  the  cause  of 
the  loss  of  co-ordination  of  movement  and  of  more  or  less  spasm 
or  paralysis.  The  great  emotional  excitability,  the  irritable  fee- 
bleness, of  the  general  paralytic,  no  less  than  the  extravagance 
of  his  ideas,  marks  a  degeneration  of  the  ideational  cells  of  the 
supreme  centres  ;  there  is  accordingly  an  inability  to  co-ordinate 
and  perform  his  ideas  successfully,  just  as  there  is  an  inability 
to  perform  movements  successfully,  because  the  spinal  centres 
are  similarly  affected. 

5.  Injuries  of  the  Brain  and  Disease  of  the  Brain  not  neces- 
sarily, 'but  occasionally,  producing  Insanity. — Injuries  of  the  head, 
when  not  followed  by  immediate  ill  consequences,  may  still  lead 
to  insanity  through  the  degenerative  changes  which  they  ulti- 
mately induce  in  the  cortical  layers  of  the  hemispheres.*  Inso- 

•  Professor  Sclilager,  of  Vienna  (Zeitsclmft  der  k.  k.  Gesellschaft  der  Acrzte  zu 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  249 

lation  notably  acts  perniciously  on  the  supreme  cerebral  centres, 
either  by  causing,  as  some  imagine,  acute  hypersemia  and  oedema, 
or,  as  is  more  probable,  over-stimulation  and  consequent  ex- 
haustion of  nervous  element.  Abscesses  and  tumours  of  the 
brain,  cysticerci  and  effusions  of  blood,  do  not  directly  or  com- 
monly produce  mental  derangement ;  when  they  do,  it  is  pro- 
bably by  a  reflex  or  sympathetic  action.  Professor  Gerhardt 
mentions  one  case  in  which  mental  disorder  was  the  first  symptom 
of  an  embolism,  the  paralytic  phenomena  following  later ;  and  in 
a  case,  related  by  Dr.  L.  Meyer,  chronic  tubercular  meningitis 
gave  rise  to  mental  disorder.  It  has  been  already  said  that  there 
are  instances  on  record  in  which  insanity,  like  tetanus,  has  been 
caused  by  peripheric  injury  of  nerve,  obscure  as  the  manner  of 
operation  in  such  case  undoubtedly  is  ;  and  Dr.  Darwin  long  ago 
made  the  observation  that  mental  derangement  sometimes  occurs 
as  the  transference  of  disorder  from  the  spinal  centres. 

The  caries  of  the  bones  of  the  skull,  which  is  an  occasional 
effect  of  tertiary  syphilis,  may  lead  to  destructive  consequences 
by  extension  of  morbid  action  to  important  parts  beneath.  There 
are,  however,  other  ways  in  which  syphilis  is  now  known  to  lead 
sometimes  to  mental  disorder :  a  syphilitic  node  formed  on  the 
internal  surface  of  the  skull  may  lead  to  secondary  mental  disease 
of  a  grave  kind ;  and,  again,  syphilis  may  give  rise  to  inflamma- 
tion of  the  membranes  of  the  brain,  followed  sometimes  by  a  low 
diffuse  exudation  in  or  between  the  membranes,  or  by  a  more 
or  less  defined  tumour  (syphiloma)  ;  the  result  being  a  hopeless 
dementia,  with  gradually  increasing  paralysis.  The  syphilitic 
exudation  sometimes,  though  rarely,  takes  place  in  the  substance 
of  the  brain  itself;  its  starting-point  then  being  the  nuclei  of 

Wien,  xiii.  1857),  has  made  some  valuable  researches  regarding  mental  disorder 
following  injury  of  the  brain.  Out  of  500  insane,  he  traced  mental  disorder  to 
injury  of  the  brain  in  49  (42  men  and  7  women).  In  21  cases  there  had  been 
complete  unconsciousness  after  the  accident ;  in  16,  some  insensibility  and  con- 
fusion of  ideas ;  in  12,  simple  dull  headache.  In  19  cases  the  mental  disorder 
came  on  in  the  course  of  a  year  after  the  injury,  but  not  till  much  later  in  many 
others,  and  in  4  cases  after  more  than  ten  years.  In  most  of  the  cases  the 
patients  were  disposed  to  congestion  of  the  brain  and  emotional  disturbance,  from 
the  time  of  the  injury,  on  taking  a  moderate  quantity  of  spirituous  liquor ; 
frequently  there  was  singing  in  the  ears  or  difficulty  of  hearing  ;  and  very  com- 
monly the  disposition  was  changed,  and  the  patient  was  prone  to  outbursts  of 
anger  or  excesses.  The  prognosis  was  very  unfavourable  ;  the  issue  in  7  cases  was 
dementia  with  paralysis,  Avhile  10  went  on  to  death. 


250  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

the  connective  tissue  which  exists  throughout  the  brain,  and  the 
destruction  of  the  nervous  cells  being  secondary.  But  of  this, 
more  hereafter. 


CONCLUDING  REMARKS. 

An  important,  but  obscure  question,  of  which  little  thought  is 
ever  taken  now,  is  not  so  much  what  is  the  cause  of  the  insanity 
as  what  is  the  cause  of  the  particular  form  which  the  insanity 
takes.  The  inborn  temperament  of  the  individual  has  certainly 
great  influence  in  determining  the  kind  of  mental  disorder,  the 
same  external  cause  giving  rise  to  different  forms  of  disease 
according  to  the  constitutional  idiosyncrasy :  the  melancholic 
temperament  will,  it  may  be  presumed,  predispose  to  melancholic 
insanity,  the  sanguine  temperament  to  a  more  expansive  de- 
rangement. On  the  other  hand,  injury  of  the  head  will  tend  to 
produce  intellectual  disorder  rather  than  emotional  depression, 
while  abdominal  disease  will  rather  favour  the  production  of 
emotional  depression  ;  for  the  organic  conditions  of  the  in- 
tegrity of  the  intellectual  faculties  are,  as  Miiller  has  observed, 
mainly  in  the  brain  itself,  but  "  the  elements  which  maintain 
the  emotions  or  strivings  of  self,  in  all  parts  of  the  organism." 
Furthermore,  it  is  plain  that  the  degree  of  development  which 
the  mind  has  reached  must  determine  in  no  slight  measure  the 
features  of  its  disorder ;  the  more  cultivated  the  mind  the  more 
various  and  complex  must  be  the  symptoms  of  its  derangement ; 
while  it  is  not  possible  that  the  undeveloped  mind  of  the  child 
immediately  after  birth  should  exhibit  ideational  disorder  of  any 
kind.  Consider  what  an  infinitely  complex  development  the 
cultivated  mind  has  been  shown  to  be,  and  what  a  long  series 
of  processes  and  what  a  variety  of  intenvorkings  of  so-called 
faculties  even  its  simpler  conceptions  imply ;  it  will  then  be 
easily  understood  how  great  and  varied  may  be  the  confusion 
and  disorder  of  its  morbid  action.  The  different  forms  of  in- 
sanity represent  different  phases  of  mental  degeneration  ;  and  in 
the  disorganization,  degeneration,  or  retrograde  metamorphosis 
of  the  mental  organization — call  the  retrograde  change  what 
we  will — there  will  be  exhibited  the  wreck  of  culture.  The 
morbid  mental  phenomena  of  an  insane  Australian  savage  will  of 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  251 

necessity  be  different  from  the  morbid  mental  phenomena  of  an 
insane  European,  just  as  the  ruins  of  a  palace  must  be  vaster 
and  more  varied  than  the  ruins  of  a  log  hut.  Tor  the  same 
reason  the  insanity  of  early  life  always  has  more  or  less  of  the 
character  of  imbecility  or  idiocy  about  it :  as  is  the  height  so  is 
the  depth,  as  is  the  development  so  is  the  degeneration.  The 
development  of  the  sexual  system  at  puberty,  and  the  great  re- 
volution which  is  thereby  effected  in  the  mental  life,  must  needs 
often  give  a  colour  to  the  phenomena  of  insanity  occurring  after 
puberty.  During  the  energy  of  mental  function  in  active  man- 
hood mania  is  the  form  of  degeneration  which  appears  most 
frequently  to  occur,  while  as  age  advances  and  energy  declines 
melancholia  becomes  more  common. 

Because  no  two  people  are  exactly  alike  in  mental  character 
and  development,  therefore  no  two  cases  of  mental  degenera- 
tion are  exactly  alike.  The  brain  is  different  in  the  matter  of 
its  development  from  other  organs  of  the  body;  for  while  the 
development  and  function  of  other  organs  are  nearly  alike  in 
different  individuals,  and  the  diseases  of  them  accordingly  have 
a  general  resemblance,  the  real  development  of  the  brain  as  the 
organ  of  mental  life  only  takes  place  after  birth,  and,  presenting 
every  variety  of  individual  function  in  health,  presents  also 
every  variety  of  morbid  function :  consequently,  two  cases  of 
insanity  may  resemble  one  another  in  the  general  features  of 
exaltation  or  depression,  or  in  the  character  of  the  delusion,  but 
will  still  have  their  special  features.  Insanity  is  not  any  fixed 
morbid  entity ;  every  instance  of  it  is  an  example  of  individual 
degeneration,  and  represents  individual  mental  life  under  other 
conditions  than  those  which  we  agree  to  regard  as  normal  or 
typical  ]STo  more  useful  work  could  be  undertaken  in  psychology 
than  an  exact  study  of  individual  minds,  sound  and  unsound. 

Weigh  carefully  the  manner  of  its  causation,  and  it  will  appear 
that  mental  derangement  must  be  a  matter  of  degree.  There 
may  be  every  variety  (a)  of  deficient  original  capacity,  (&)  of 
deficient  development  of  the  mental  organization  after  birth,  and 
(c)  of  degree  of  degeneration.  Between  the  extremest  cases  of 
madness,  therefore,  and  the  highest  level  of  mental  soundness, 
there  will  be  infinite  varieties  shading  insensibly  one  into 
another ;  so  that  no  man  will  be  able  to  say  positively  where 


252  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY. 

sanity  ends  and  insanity  begins,  or  to  determine  with  certainty 
in  every  case  whether  a  particular  person  is  insane  or  not.  The 
question  of  an  individual's  responsibility  must  then  plainly  be  a 
most  difficult  one :  there  are  insane  persons  who  are  certainly 
responsible  for  what  they  do,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  there  are 
sane  people  who  under  certain  circumstances  are  as  plainly  not 
responsible  for  their  actions.  A  madman  is  notably  capable  of 
great  self-control  when  his  interest  specially  demands  it ;  in  the 
majority  of  cases  he  knows  full  well  the  difference  between  right 
and  wrong  ;  but,  knowing  the  right,  he  is  instigated  by  the  im- 
pulses of  his  morbid  nature  to  do  the  wrong,  and  is  not  held  in 
check  by  those  motives  which  suffice  to  restrain  the  sane  portion 
of  the  community. 

Again,  the  investigation  made  into  the  causation  of  mental 
disease  exhibits  the  necessity  of  taking  wider  views  of  its  origin 
and  import  than  is  commonly  done.  Insanity  marks  a  failure 
in  organic  adaptation  to  external  nature  :  it  is  the  result  and 
evidence  of  a  discord  between  the  man  and  his  surroundings  :  he 
cannot  bend  circumstances  to  himself  nor  accommodate  himself 
to  circumstances.  Now,  whosoever  either  from  inherited  weak- 
ness of  nature  or  from  adverse  circumstances  is  unequal  to  the 
predetermined  impulse  or  nisus  of  evolution  which  is  immanent 
in  mankind,  as  in  every  other  form  of  organic  life,  must  fall  by 
the  wayside  and  be  left  stranded.  For  as  in  the  stupendous 
progression  of  the  human  race  whole  nations  drop  away  like 
dead  branches  from  the  living  tree,  so  amongst  nations  indi- 
viduals decay  and  perish  in  crowds  as  the  dead  leaves  fall  from 
the  living  branches.  Nature  indeed  counts  individual  life  very 
cheaply  :  in  the  development  of  vegetable  and  animal  life  she 
sacrifices  numberless  seeds  and  germs,  of  fifty  bringing  but  one 
to  bear,  and  in  the  organic  evolution  of  mankind  she  sacrifices 
with  like  lavish  profusion  countless  thousands  of  individual 

lives. 

"  So  careful  of  the  type  she  seems, 
So  careless  of  the  single  life." 

It  behoves  us  not  to  let  these  failures,  these  abortive  minds, 
pass  away  without  learning  the  lesson  which  their  history 
conveys  :  they  are  instructive  instances  well  fitted  to  teach  the 
causes  of  failure,  and  thus  to  indicate  the  method  of  a  successful 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  253 

adaptation  to  external  nature.  AVhen  he  is  thus  brought  into 
harmony  with  nature,  the  development  of  the  individual  becomes 
the  consummate  evolution  of  nature. 


APPENDIX. 

In  order  to  illustrate  more  fully  this  chapter  on  the  causation  of 
insanity,  I  append  here  the  short  notes  of  fifty  cases,  all  of  which  were 
under  my  care,  and  in  which  I  laboured  to  satisfy  myself  of  the 
conspiring  causes  of  the  mental  disease  : — 

1.  A  captain  in  the  army,  and  the  only  surviving  son  of  his  mother, 
who  was  a  widow.     She  suffered  very  much  from  scrofulous  disease, 
and  he  was  wasting  away  with  phthisis.    Mental  state,  that  of  demented 
melancholia,  with  manifold  delusions  of  suspicion.     He  was  the  last  of 
his  family,  two  brothers  having  died  very  much  as  he  died.     His 
grandfather  began  life  as  a  common  porter,  ultimately  became  partner 
in  a  great  manufacturing  business,  and,  having  amassed  enormous 
wealth,  made  a  great  display  in  London  on  the  strength  of  it.     His 
high  hopes  of  founding  a  family  on  the  wealth  which  it  was  the  sole 
aim  of  his  life  to  acquire  have  thus  issued. 

2.  There  was  direct  hereditary  predisposition,  and  the  temperament 
was  notably  excitable  through  life.  There  was  no  evidence  of  excesses  of 
any  kind,  but  there  had  been  many  business  anxieties.     The  mental 
disease  was  general  paralysis. 

3.  An   amiable  gentleman,  on  the   death    of  his   wife,  formed  a 
connexion  with  a  woman  of  loose  character.     Continued  sexual  ex- 
cesses, with  free  indulgence  in  wine  and  other  stimulants,  ended  in 
general  paralysis. 

4.  A  conceited  Cockney,  the  son  of  a  successful  London  tailor  and 
money-lender,  strongly  imbued  with  the  tradesman's  spirit,  and  with 
offensive  dissenting  zeal.     Hopelessly  addicted  to  masturbation,  and 
suffering  from  the  disagreeable  form  of  mental  derangement  following 
such  cause. 

5.  Two  ladies  of  middle  age,  unmarried,  and  cousins.     They  both 
suffered  from  extreme  moral  insanity,  both  revealing  in  their  conduct 
the  tyranny  of  a  bad  organization.     There  was  insanity  in  the  family, 
in  one  case  the  father  being  actually  insane  ;  and  in  both  cases  the 
parents  being  whimsical,  capricious,  and  very  injudicious  as  parents. 
A  bad  organization,  made  worse  by  bad  training. 

6.  An  unmarried  lady,  aged  40,  addicted  to  the  wildest  and  coarsest 
excesses,  though  of  good  social  position  and  of  independent  means; 


254  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CIIAP. 

justifying  in  every  respect  her  conduct,  though  it  more  than  once 
brought  her  to  the  gaol.  Family  history  not  ascertainable,  hut  evident 
not  good  organization  in  her.  No  aim  nor  occupation  in  life,  but 
extreme  egoistic  development  in  all  regards. 

7.  A  publican,  set.  31,  had  done  little  for  some  time  but  stupify 
himself  with  brandy  in  his  own  bar-parlour.     The  consequence  was 
furious  mania  and  extreme  incoherence :  acute  mania  from  continued 
intoxication,  not  delirium  tremens. — Recovery. 

8.  A  woman,  set.  47,  of  dark  bilious  temperament,  who  had  endured 
much  from  her  husband's  unkindness  and  domestic  anxieties,  under- 
went "the  change  of  life,"    and  became   extremely  melancholic. — 
Eecovery. 

9.  Hereditary  predisposition  marked.     First  attack,  set.  38,  when 
unmarried.     Second   attack,  set.  58,  she  having  a  few  years   before 
married  an  old  gentleman  in  need  of  a  nurse.     She  was  given  to 
taking  stimulants,  fancied  herself  ill,  and  must  always  be  having  the 
doctor ;    in  fact,  hypochondriacal  melancholia  gradually  grew  into 
positive  insanity. — Recovery. 

10.  A  married  lady,  set.  31,  without  children,  and  having  great  self- 
feeling.     She  went  on  one  occasion  to  a  Methodist  meeting,  was  much 
excited  by  a  violent  sermon,  and  immediately  went  mad,  fancying  her 
soul  to  be  lost,  and  making  attempts  at  suicide. — Recovery. 

11.  A  young  lady,  set.  25,  who  had  some  anxieties  at  home,  suffered 
a  disappointment   of   her  affections.     Black  depression  running  into 
acute  dementia. — Recovery. 

12.  A  married  woman,  set.  44,  of  dark  bilious  temperament,  had  never 
had  any  children.     At  the  "  change   of  life "  profound  melancholia 
came  on. 

13.  A  gentleman,  aged  60,  of  fine  sensitive  temperament,  whose 
mother  was  said  to  have  been  flighty  and  peculiar,  had  himself  been 
noted  for  slight  peculiarities.     He  became  profoundly  melancholic, 
thinking  himself  ruined,  and  intensely  suicidal.     Refusal  of  food. 
Everything  taken,  however,  was  vomited,  and  diagnosis  of  organic 
abdominal  disease,  probably  malignant,  was  made. — Death  from  ex- 
haustion. 

14.  A  bookseller,  set.  41,  temperate,  of  considerable  intellectual 
capacity,  but  of  inordinate  conceit ;  advocated  a  general  division  of 
property  and  other  extreme  notions.     He  ultimately  got  the  notion 
that  there  was  a  conspiracy  against  him  on  the  part  of  the  Govern- 
ment, and  tried  to  strangle  his  wife  as  a  party  to  it.     After  two  years 
he  died  of  phthisis,  with  many  of  the  symptoms  of  general  paralysis. 


i.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  255 

The  bodily  disease  seemed  to  have  conspired  with  a  natural  vice  of 
character,  and  thus  to  have  made  the  mental  derangement  one  of  its 
earliest  symptoms. 

15.  A  married  man,  set.   50,  of  anxious  temperament.     Profound 
melancholia ;  refusal  of  food.     Second  attack.     Apart  from  the  pre- 
disposition established  by  a  former  attack,  the  cause  seemed  to  be 
great  self-feeling,  assuming  a  religious  garb.     Very  fervent  always  in 
devotion,  but  intense  egoistic  feeling ;  entire  reference  of  everything  to 
self,  and  natural  inability  to  form  altruistic  conceptions. — Recovery. 

16.  A  single  lady,  a3t.  38,  fancied  herself  under  mesmeric  influence, 
in  a  state  of  clairvoyance,  and  had  a  variety  of  anomalous  sensations. 
Rubbed  her  skin  till  it  was  sore  in  places,  bit  her  nails  to  the  quick, 
scratched   her   face,    &c.       Quasi-hysterical    maniacal    exacerbations. 
Irregularity  of  menstruation,  and  suspected  self-abuse. — Recovery. 

1 7.  A   lady,  set.  45,  but  looking  very  much  older,  having  had  an 
anxious  life.     Hereditary  predisposition  ;  change  of  life  ;  melancholic 
depression,  passing  into  destructive  dementia.     Convulsions,  paralysis, 
death.     Here  softening  of  the  brain  was  preceded  for  some  weeks  by 
mental  symptoms. 

18.  Hereditary    predisposition.       Great    intemperance.       General 
paralysis. 

19.  Habitual   alcoholic   excesses  ;    pecuniary   difficulties  ;    mania. 
After  some  years  hemiplegia  of  right  side,  muscular  power  being  par- 
tially regained  after  a  time.     The  patient  lived  for  years  thus.     Para- 
lysis of  long  duration  was  the  usual  family  disease  and  cause  of  death. 

20.  Suicidal  insanity  in  a  married  lady.     Strong  hereditary  pre- 
disposition to  insanity.    Exhaustion  produced  by  lactation,  and  mental 
depression,  occasioned  by  the  long  absences  of  her  husband  from  home. 
— Recovery. 

21.  Third  or  fourth  attack   of   acute   moaning  melancholia  in  a 
woman,  aged  40.     Intense  self-conceit  and  selfishness  natural  to  her. 
Gastric  derangement,  and  obstinately  constipated  bowels.     Whenever 
bodily  derangement  reaches  a  certain  pitch,  or  adversity  occurs,  it 
seems  to  upset  the  equilibrium  of  an  ill-balanced  mind,  predisposed  to 
disorder  by  former  attacks. — Recovery. 

22.  Gambling,  betting,  drinking,  and  sexual  intemperance.    General 
paralysis. 

23.  A  bad  organization  plainly— not  due  to  insanity  in  family,  but 
to  the  absence  of  moral  element.     A  life  of  great  excitement,  and 
of  much  speculation  in  Australia.     Alcoholic  and  sexual  excesses  (?). 
General  paralysis. 


256  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

24.  A  widow,  set.  58,  the  daughter  of  one  who  had  begun  life  as  a 
labourer  at  a  coal  wharf,  but  who  made  a  great  deal  of  money.     He 
was  without  education,  so  that  his  daughter,  brought  up  as  a  rich 
person,  but  without  social  cultivation,  did  not  get  opportunely  married  : 
as  it  is  expressed  in  the  North,  "  she  was  too  high  for  the  stirrup,  and 
not  high  enough  for  the  saddle."     "When  50  years  old,  she  married  an 
old  gentleman,  whose  former  manner  of  life  had  made  a  nurse  needful 
to  him.     He  died,  and  left  her  the  income  of  a  large  property  for  her 
life.     She  now  got  suspicious  of  his  relatives,  to  whom  the  property 
was  to  revert  on  her  death,  was  harassed  with  her  money,  which  she 
did  not  know  what  to  do  with,  but  fancied  others  had  designs  on, 
and  finally  went  from  bad  to  worse  until,  believing  all  the  world  was 
conspiring  against  her,  she  got  a  revolver,  and  threatened  to  shoot  her 
fancied  enemies. 

25.  The  daughter  of  a  common  labourer,  who  had  become  very  rich 
in  the  colliery  business,  set.  32,  single.     Her  father  being  dead  she 
was  very  rich  ;  she  was  without  any  real  education,  and  very  vulgar, 
and  spent  the  greater  part  of  her  time  in  drinking  gin  and  reading 
sensational  novels.     Great  hereditary  predisposition,  not  to  insanity 
only,  but  to  suicidal   insanity.     Suicidal  melancholia,  with   an  in- 
coherence approaching  dementia. 

26.  A  gentleman,  aged  34.     Steady,  quiet  drinking,  on  all  pos- 
sible occasions.     The  "  ne'er-do-weel "  of  the  family,  having  tumbled 
about  the  world  in  Mexican  wars  and  South  American  mines,  and  in 
other  places,  as  such  persons  do.     Feebleness  of  mind  and  loss  of 
memory.     An  uncle  had  been  very  much  the  same  sort  of  person,  and 
had  died  in  an  asylum. 

27.  A  married  woman,  aged  49,  gaunt,  and  seemingly  of  bilious 
temperament.     After  a  fever  of  five  weeks'  duration,  called  "  gastric," 
probably  typhoid,   acute  maniacal  excitement,  violence,  incoherence, 
&c. — Eecovery  within  a  fortnight. 

28.  Dementia  after  epilepsy,  the  fits  occurring  at  the   catamenial 
period.     Brother  maniacal,  and  sister  without  the  moral  element  in 
her  disposition. 

29.  The  young  lady  before  mentioned  as  No.  1 1  was  removed  by  a 
penurious   father  from  medical  care  before  recovery  was  thoroughly 
established,   and  in    opposition    to   advice.     The    return    to   home 
anxieties  brought  on  an  attack  of  acute  mania,   with   gabbling   of 
endless  incoherent  rhymes. — Permanent  recovery  this  time. 

30.  A  warehouseman,  aged  35,  a  Primitive  Methodist,  grievously 
addicted  to  preaching.     He  had  accomplished  some  self-education,  but. 


I.]  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  IXSAXITY.  £57 

had  a  boundless  conceit  of  self,  and  infinite  self-feeling.  Indigestion, 
pyrosis,  frequent  vomiting  after  meals.  Melancholia,  -with  delusion 
that  he  had  committed  the  unpardonable  sin,  and  endless  moaning. 
Most  remarkable  is  the  evidence  of  self-feeling  in  such  patients- — self- 
renunciation  not  being  a  word  that  enters  into  their  vocabulary.  This 
man,  for  example,  though  well  aware  that  vomiting  followed  eating, 
and  sufficiently  afflicted  thereby,  could  not  be  induced  to  regulate  his 
diet  voluntarily,  but  ate  gluttonously,  unless  prevented. 

31.  A    married    woman,   aet.    32,  of   stout   habit    of    body,  and 
habitually  locked  secretions.     The  sudden  death  of  a   son  brought 
on  severe  moaning  melancholia. 

32.  A  single  lady,  aged  57,  who  had  been  insane  for  thirty  years. 
There  was  the  strongest  hereditary  taint. 

33.  A  young  man,  extremely  delicate,  aged  22,  had  acute  dementia, 
following  acute  rheumatism.     There  was  valvular  disease  of  the  heart, 
with  loud  mitral  regurgitant  murmur. — Issue  of  the  case  unknown. 

34.  Slight  hereditary  predisposition,  much  aggravated  by  injudicious 
education.     A  tradesman's  daughter,  set  24,  brought  up  in  idleness. 
Domestic  troubles  and  anxieties  after  marriage.     Mania, — Eecovery. 

35.  A  woman,  set.  30,  "Wesleyan,  single.     Suicidal  melancholia, 
with  the   delusion  that  her   soul  is   lost.      Menstrual  irregularity. 
Extreme  devotional  excitement,  with  evidently  active  sexual  feelings. 
— Eecovery. 

36.  A   young  woman,  eet.  25,  single,  Wesleyan.     Mania.     Cause, 
same  probably  as  in  the  last  case. — Eecovery. 

37.  A  respectable,  temperate,  and  industrious  tradesman,  set  40, 
Wesleyan,  a  teetotaller,  and  much  superior  to  a  vulgar  wife.     Second 
attack.     His  father  committed  suicide ;   his  brother  is  very  flighty. 
General  paralysis. 

38.  A  sober,   hardworking,   respectable   bookseller,  not   given  to 
excesses  of  any  kind,  so  far  as  was  ascertainable.     Slight  hereditary 
predisposition.     General  paralysis. 

In  both  these  last  cases  there  was  general  paralysis  in  men  who  had 
never  been  intemperate.  In  both,  however,  there  were  large  families 
of  children,  and  the  struggle  of  life  had  plainly  been  very  anxious 
and  severe. 

39.  A  woman,  set.  32.     Acute  mania  came  on  two  months  after 
childbirth. 

40.  A  lady,  set   34,  single,  without  other  occupation  or  interest 
than  religious  exercises.     Suicidal  melancholia,  with  the  delusion  that 
she  had  sold  herself  to  the  devil.     Amenorrhoea. — Eecovery. 

18 


258  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

41.  A  married  woman,  set.  40.     Sudden  outbreak  of  mania,  after 
going  to  a  revival  meeting.     Amenorrhoea. — Kecovery. 

42.  A  married  man  -with  a  family,  set    52,  a  Dissenter,  holding 
an  office  of  authority  in  his  Church,  and  most  exact  in  his  religious 
duties.    Secretly,  he  kept  a  mistress,  however,  and  lived  a  rather  dissi- 
pated life.     Outbreak  of  acute  mania,  with  a  threatening  of  general 
paralysis. — Eecovery ;  for  a  time  at  any  rate. 

43.  Acute  mental  annihilation  in  a  young  man  about  a  year  and  a 
half  after  marriage.     One  or  two  intervals  of  a  few  hours  of  mental 
restoration. — Death  in  epileptiform   convulsions.     Softening   of   the 
brain  in  extreme   degree,  but  limited  in  extent.     Excessive  sexual 
indulgence. 

44.  A  married  woman,  set.  44,  who  has  had  several  children,  and 
who  has  become  insane  after  each  confinement.     Maniacal  incoherence 
and   excitement,   with  unconsciousness   that   she  has   had  a  child. 
— Recovery. 

45.  Hereditary  predisposition.      A  Dissenter  of    extreme   views, 
narrow-minded,  and  bigoted.     He  was  married  when  thirty-six  years 
old,  and  became  melancholic  a  short  time  after  the  birth  of  his  first 
child. — Eecovery. 

46.  Complete  loss  of  memory,  and  of  all  energy  of  character,  and 
failure  of   intelligence,   in   a  man,   ait.    36,   single,    from   continual 
intemperance  in  drinking   and   smoking.     Has  previously  had  two 
attacks  of  delirium  tremens. 

47.  An  extremely  good-looking  young  widow,   who   had  been   a 
singer  at  some  public  singing-rooms,  and  the  mistress  of  tlie  proprietor 
of  them.     Sexual  excesses.     General  paralysis. 

48.  Attack  of  acute  violent  mania  in  a  young  surgeon,  set.   -7. 
Afterwards  three  days'  heavy  stertorous  sleep ;  then  seeming  recovery 
for  twenty-four  hours  ;  but  on  the  next  day  recurrence  of  mania,  fol- 
lowed soon  by  severe  epileptic  fits. — Eecovery. 

49.  Extreme  moral  perversion,  with  the  most  extravagant  conceit 
of  self,  and  unruly  conduct  in  a  young  man,  a  clerk.     Alternations  of 
deep  depression  and  suicidal  tendency.     Cause,  self-abuse. 

00.  A  single  lady,  aged  41,  who,  on  her  return  from  school  when 
fifteen  years  old,  was  queer,  listless,  and  has  always  since  been  rather 
peculiar.  Hereditary  predisposition.  Acute  melancholia,  with  the 
delusion  that  she  is  lost  because  she  has  refused  an  offer  of  marriage 
by  a  clergyman,  such  offer  never  having  been  thought  of  by  him. 


INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE. 

IF  the  account  previously  given  of  the  gradual  evolution  of  the 
so-called  mental  faculties  be  correct,  the  insanity  met  with 
in  children  must  of  necessity  be  of  the  simplest  kind ;  where  no 
mental  faculty  has  been  organized  no  disorder  of  mind  can  well 
be  manifest.  The  kind  of  mental  derangement  displayed  in 
early  life  will  in  reality  serve  as  a  searching  test  of  the  value  of 
the  principles  already  enunciated,  and,  if  found  to  be  in  strict 
accordance  with  them,  will  not  fail  to  afford  strong  support  to 
them.  While  it  is  commonly  thought  sufficient  to  dismiss  all 
such  instances  as  singular  anomalies  in  nature,  inexplicable, 
and  belonging  to  the  regions  of  disorder — as  though  to  call  a 
thing  unnatural  were  to  remove  it  from  the  domain  of  natural 
law — any  glimpse  of  law  or  order  discernible  in  such  confusion 
will  be  so  far  a  gain. 

The  first  movements  of  the  child  are  reflex  to  impressions 
made  upon  it ;  but  so  quickly  does  sensorial  perception  with 
motor  reaction  thereto  follow  upon  these  early  movements,  that 
we  are  not  able  to  fix  a  distinct  line  between  the  reflex  and 
sensori-motor  actions.  The  aimless  thrusting  out  of  the  infant's 
limb  brings  it  in  contact  with  some  external  object,  whereupon 
it  is  probable  that  a  sensation  is  excited.  But  it  would  appear 
that  the  particular  muscular  exertion  must  be  the  condition  of 
a  muscular  feeling  of  the  act ;  so  that  the  muscular  sense  of  the 
movement  and  the  sensation  of  the  external  object  become 
associated,  and  for  the  future  unavoidably  suggest  one  another ; 
a  muscular  intuition  of  external  nature  is  in  fact  organized,  and 
one  of  the  first  steps  in  the  process  of  mental  formation  accom- 
plished. If  we  call  to  mind  how,  when  discussing  actuation,  it 


260  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  [CHAP. 

was  shown,  in  the  case  of  the  eye,  for  example,  that  a  sensation 
was  the  direct  cause  of  a  certain  accommodating  movement,  and 
that  the  movement  thereupon  gave  us  the  intuition  of  distance, 
we  may  perceive  how  the  organic  association  of  a  sensation  from 
without  with  a  respondent  or  associated  muscular  act,  does  by 
degrees  impart  definite  intuitions  of  external  objects  to  the 
young  mind.  Suppose  now  that  an  infant  becomes  insane 
immediately  after  birth,  what  sort  of  insanity  must  it  exhibit  ? 
The  extent  of  mental  disorder  possible  is  clearly  limited  by  the 
extent  of  existence  of  mental  faculty ;  which,  as  we  have  seen, 
is  almost  nothing.  In  this  regard  the  observed  facts  agree 
with  theory ;  when  a  child  is,  by  reason  of  a  bad  descent  or  of 
baneful  influences  during  uterine  life,  born  with  such  an  extreme 
degree  of  instability  of  nervous  element  that,  on  the  first  play  of 
external  circumstances,  its  nervous  centres  react  in  convulsive 
form,  it  mostly  dies  in  convulsions.  The  diseased  action  is  a 
diseased  action  of  the  nervous  centres  of  reflex  action — those 
which  alone  have  at  this  time  power  of  functional  action ;  the 
convulsions  express  the  morbid  condition  of  them, — might,  in- 
deed, be  said  to  represent  the  insanity  of  them,  as  insanity, 
on  the  other  hand,  truly  represents  sometimes  a  convulsive 
action  of  the  higher  nervous  centres. 

It  has  been  shown,  however,  that  it  is  impossible,  by  reason 
of  the  close  connexion  of  sensorial  action  with  reflex  action  in 
the  infant — the  actual  continuity  of  development  which  then 
exists — to  fix  a  distinct  period  during  which  its  functions  are 
entirely  reflex.  It  happens  consequently  that  in  the  earliest 
morbid  phenomena  of  nervous  centres  there  is  commonly  the 
evidence  of  some  sensori-motor  disturbance.  An  impression  on 
the  sense  of  sight,  for  example,  is  not  quietly  assimilated  so  as  to 
persist  as  an  organized  residuum  in  the  proper  nervous  centre,  but 
immediately  excites  a  reaction  outwards  of  the  unstable  cells  of 
the  associate  motor  centres ;  irregular  and  violent  actions  prompted 
by  sensations  testify  to  the  disorder  of  the  sensorial  and  corre- 
sponding motor  centres,  as  convulsions  testify  to  the  disorder  of 
the  centres  of  reflex  action.  The  phenomena  of  a  true  sensorial 
insanity  are  intermixed  with  the  morbid  manifestations  of  the 
lower  nervous  centres,  and  to  every  impression  made  upon  the 
infant  there  is  irregular  and  violent  reaction,  sensori-motor  and 


IL]  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  261 

reflex.  Instances  of  such,  morbid  action  so  soon  after  birth  are 
certainly  rare ;  nevertheless  they  do  sometimes  occur,  and  have 
been  recorded.  Crichton  quotes  from  Greding  a  well-known 
case  of  a  child  which,  as  he  says,  was  raving  mad  as  soon  as  it 
was  born.  "  A  woman,  about  forty  years  old,  of  a  full  and 
plethoric  habit  of  body,  who  constantly  laughed  and  did  the 
strangest  things,  but  who,  independently  of  these  circumstances, 
enjoyed  the  very  best  health,  was,  on  the  20th  January,  1763, 
brought  to  bed,  without  any  assistance,  of  a  male  child  who  was 
raving  mad.  When  he  was  brought  to  our  workhouse,  which 
was  on  the  24th,  he  possessed  so  much  strength  in  his  legs  and 
arms  that  four  women  could  at  times  with  difficulty  restrain  him. 
These  paroxysms  either  ended  in  an  uncontrollable  fit  of  laughter, 
for  which  no  evident  reason  could  be  observed,  or  else  he  tore 
in  anger  everything  near  him, — clothes,  linen,  bed  furniture,  and 
even  thread,  when  he  could  get  hold  of  it.  We  durst  not  allow 
him  to  be  alone,  otherwise  he  would  get  on  the  benches  and 
tables,  and  even  attempt  to  climb  up  the  walls.  Afterwards, 
however,  when  he  began  to  have  teeth  he  died."  It  is  certainly 
remarkable  that  a  child  so  young  should  have  been  able  to  do 
so  much ;  and  those  who  advocate  innate  mental  faculties  might 
well  ask  how  it  is  possible  under  any  other  supposition  to 
account  for  such  an  extraordinary  exhibition  of  more  or  less 
co-ordinate  power  in  so  young  a  creature.  Two  considerations 
should  be  borne  in  mind  with  regard  to  this  case :  first,  that 
the  mother  of  the  child  was  herself  peculiar,  so  that  her  infant 
inherited  an  unstable  condition  of  nervous  element,  and.  con- 
sequent disposition  to  irregular  and  premature  reaction  on  the 
occasion  of  an  external  stimulus  ;  and  secondly,  that  there  does, 
as  previously  set  forth,  exist  in  the  constitution  of  the  nervous 
system  the  power  of  certain  co-ordinate  automatic  acts,  such  as 
correspond  in  man  to  the  instinctive  acts  of  animals.  Many 
young  animals  are  born  with  the  power  of  immediately  co- 
ordinating their  muscles  into  definite  action,  and  the  human 
infant  is  not  destitute  of  the  germ  of  a  like  power  over  voluntary 
muscles,  while  it  has  complete  the  power  of  certain  co-ordinate 
automatic  acts ;  it  is  conceivable,  therefore,  that,  without  will, 
and  even  without  consciousness,  actions  may  be  displayed  in 
answer  to  sensations  which,  like  those  of  this  insane  infant,  have 


262  INSJXITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  [CHAP. 

more  or  less  semblance  of  design  in  them.*  By  reason  of  the 
morbid  condition  of  nervous  element  we  have  a  convulsive  mani- 
festation of  the  innate  co-ordinate  faculty — irregular,  violent,  and 
destructive  movements,  and  the  premature  and  extravagant  exhi- 
bition of  acts  which  would  be  natural  in  a  more  restrained  form 
at  a  later  stage  of  normal  development,  such,  for  example,  as 
"  uncontrollable  fits  of  laughter  without  any  evident  reason."  -|- 
As  the  earliest  condition  of  the  infant's  mind  corresponds  in 
a  general  way  with  the  permanent  condition  of  mind  of  those 
animals  all  the  actions  of  which  are  reflex  and  season-motor,  it 
is  no  wonder  that  the  phenomena  of  infantile  insanity  should 
be  comparable  with  those  of  animal  insanity.  In  both  cases 
the  morbid  phenomena  are  mainly  referable  to  disorder  of  the 
sensorial  and  associate  motor  nervous  centres ;  so  that  we  might 
almost  describe  the  insanity  as  sensorial.  The  elephant,  usually 
a  gentle  enough  creature,  is  subject  at  certain  seasons  to  attacks 
of  furious  madness,  in  which  it  rushes  about  in  the  most  dangerous 
way,  roaring  loudly,  and  destroying  everything  within  its  reach ; 
and  other  animals  are  now  and  then  affected  with  similar 
paroxysms  of  what  might  almost  be  called  an  epileptic  fury. 
There  is  far  more  power  in  the  insane  elephant  than  in  the 
insane  infant,  and  it  is  able  to  do  a  great  deal  more  mischief ; 
but  there  is  really  no  difference  in  the  fundamental  nature  of 

*  "That  they  do  this  by  instinct,  something  implanted  in  the  frame,  the 
mechanism  of  the  body,  before  any  marks  of  wit  or  reason  are  to  be  seen  in  them, 
I  am  fully  persuaded  ;  as  I  am  likewise  that  nature  teaches  them  the  manner  of 
fighting  peculiar  to  their  species  ;  and  children  strike  with  their  arms  as  naturally 
as  horses  kick,  dogs  bite,  and  bulls  push  with  their  horns." — Mandeville's  Fable 
of  tlie  Bees,  vol.  ii.  p.  352. 

•r  "The  youngest  person  whom  I  have  seen  labouring  under  mania,"  says  Sir 
A.  Morison,  "was  a  little  girl  of  six  years  old,  under  my  care  in  Bethlehem 
Hospital.  I  have,  however,  frequently  met  with  violent  and  unmanageable  idiots 
of  a  very  tender  age."  Dr.  Joseph  Frank  records  having  seen,  on  a  visit  to  St. 
Luke's  Hospital,  in  1802,  a  case  of  mania  occurring  at  the  age  of  two  years. — 
Lectures  on  Insanity,  \>y  Sir  A.  Morison,  II. D.  In  the  Appendix  to  one  of  the 
Reports  of  the  Scotch  Lunacy  Commissioners,  mention  is  made  of  a  girl  aged  six 
years,  who  was  said  to  be  afflicted  with  congenital  mania.  She  was  illegitimate, 
and  her  mother  was  a  prostitute.  She  could  not  walk,  paraplegia  having  come  on 
when  she  was  a  year  old  ;  she  was  incoherent,  and  subject  to  paroxysms  of  violent 
passion  ;  at  all  times  very  intractable ;  slept  little,  and  ate  largely.  Dr.  Spurz- 
heim  (Observations  on  Derangement  of  Mind)  views  all  such  cases  as  partial  idiots 
from  birth.  The  cerebral  organization  at  so  early  .an  age  is,  he  adds,  so  delicate 
that  it  docs  not  bear  severe  morbid  affections  without  losing  its  fitness  for  mental 
development,  and  endangering  life. 


ii.]  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  263 

the  madness ;  the  maddened  acts  are  the  reactions  of  morbid 
motor  centres  to  impressions  made  on  morbid  sensory  centres ; 
and  the  whole  mind,  whether  of  the  infant  or  of  the  animal, 
is  absorbed  in  the  convulsive  reaction.  The  morbid  phenomena 
of  mind  strictly  confirm  in  this  regard  the  principles  which  the 
study  of  the  plan  of  development  of  mind  established. 

The  moment  we  have  recognised  the  existence  of  sensorial 
insanity,  we  become  sensible  of  the  value  of  the  distinction. 
Xot  only  does  it  furnish  an  adequate  interpretation  of  the  violent 
phenomena  of  the  insanity  of  the  animal  and  of  the  infant,  but 
it  alone  suffices  to  explain  that  desperate  fury  which  sometimes 
follows  a  succession  of  epileptic  attacks.  When  the  furious 
epileptic  maniac  strikes  and  injures  whatsoever  and  whomsoever 
he  meets,  and,  like  some  destructive  tempest,  storms  through  a 
ward  with  convulsed  energy,  he  has  no  notion,  no  consciousness, 
of  what  he  is  doing ;  to  all  intents  and  purposes  he  is  an  organic 
machine,  set  in  the  most  destructive  motion  ;  friend  or  foe  alike 
perish  before  him ;  all  his  energy  is  absorbed  in  the  convulsive 
explosion.  And  yet  he  does  not  rage  quite  aimlessly,  but 
makes  more  or  less  definite  attacks  upon  objects  :  he  sees  what 
is  before  him  and  destroys  it ;  there  is  some  method  in  his  mad- 
ness ;  his  convulsive  fury  is  more  or  less  co-ordinate.  These 
desperate  deeds  are  respondent  to  morbid  sensations  ;'  there  often 
exist  terrible  hallucinations,  such  as  blood-red  flames  before 
the  eyes,  loud  roaring  noises  or  imperative  voices  in  the  ears, 
sulphurous  smells  in  the  nostrils :  and  any  real  object  which 
does  present  itself  before  the  eyes  is  seen  with  the  strangest 
and  most  unreal  characters  ;  lifeless  objects  seem  to  threaten 
his  life,  and  the  pitying  face  of  a  friend  becomes  the  menacing 
face  of  a  devil ;  his  movements  therefore  do  not  answer  to  the 
realities  around  him,  but  to  the  unreal  surroundings  which  his 
disease  has  created.*  There  exists  for  the  time  a  true  sensorial 
insanity,  the  higher  nervous  centres  being  in  abeyance;  and 
after  the  frantic  paroxysm  is  over  there  is  complete  forgetful- 
ness  of  it  as  there  is  ibrgetfulness  of  sensorial  action  in  health. 
There  are  necessarily  points  of  difference  between  this  epileptic 
fury  and  infantile  insanity,  arising  out  of  the  residua,  sensory 

*  An  epileptic,  under  my  care,  usually  a  mild  and  geiitle  being,  used  to  become 
a  most  violent  and  dangerous  maniac  after  a  series  of  fits,  and  to  commit  terrible 
destruction.  He  thought  at  these  times  that  he  was  fighting  for  his  life  with  a  iiou. 


264  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  [CHAP. 

and  motor,  that  have  been  acquired  and  organized  through 
experience  in  the  proper  centres  of  the  adult:  the  residua  in 
the  sensory  ganglia  of  the  adult  render  possible  those  special 
hallucinations  which  the  infant  cannot  have,  and  the  residua 
in  the  motor  centres,  which  are  the  condition  of  the  secondary 
automatic  faculties,  render  possible  a  degree  and  variety  of  vio- 
lence which  the  infant,  possessing  only  such  germs  of  co-ordinate 
automatic  power  as  are  original,  must  needs  fall  short  of. 

ISTo  one  who  has  observed  himself  attentively  when  suddenly 
awaking  out  of  sleep  but  must  have  noticed  that  he  has  had  at 
times  hallucinations  both  visual  and  auditory.  He  has  heard 
a  voice,  which  no  one  else  could  hear,  distinctly  say  something, 
and  on  reflection  only  is  convinced  that  the  words  were  subjec- 
tive ;  or  he  has  waked  up  in  the  night  and  seen  around  him  the 
objects  of  his  dream,  and  been  positively  unable  for  a  time  to 
discriminate  between  the  real  and  the  unreal, — has  perhaps  laid 
down  and  gone  to  sleep  again  without  successfully  doing  so. 
When  the  integrity  of  nervous  element  has  been  damaged, 
whether  by  reason  of  continued  intemperance  or  from  some 
other  cause,  these  half- waking  hallucinations  acquire  a  vivid 
reality,  and  leave  behind  them  a  painful  feeling  in  the  mind. 
If  we  could  imagine  this  temporary  condition  to  last  some  time, 
and  our  actions  to  be  in  accordance  with  our  hallucinations,  then 
we  should  get  a  conception  of  that  which  is  the  state  of  things 
in  sensorial  insanity. 

After  a  child  has  lived  a  few  years,  the  residua  of  its  sensa- 
tions have  been  so  far  organized  in  their  proper  nervous  centres 
that  on  the  recurrence  of  a  sensation  it  has  a  definite  character : 
in  other  words,  the  child  has  acquired  the  power  of  definite 
sensory  perception.  Suppose  now  that  some  morbid  cause,  such. 
as  a  deranged  condition  of  the  blood,  excites  to  activity  these 
slumbering  or  quiescent  residua,  there  will  then  be  a  subjective 
sensation  or  hallucination,  which  may  remain  as  such,  or  lead  to 
an  answering  motor  reaction.  In  dealing  with  sensorial  insanity 
it  is  necessary  then  to  bear  in  mind,  as  was  done  when  treating 
of  the  physiology  of  sensation,  both  the  receptive  and  the  reactive 
side.  A  violent  and  convulsive  reaction  may  mask  all  other 
features  of  the  disease,  and  give  it  an  cptleptiform  character ;  or 
the  active  sensory  residua  may  persist  in  consciousness  as  haliu- 


XL]  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  265 

cinations,  giving  rise,  if  they  give  rise  to  any  answering  move- 
ments, to  such  as  are  rather  of  a  choreic  character. 

A  variety  of  insanity  in  children,  then,  which  we  may  next 
consider,  is  that  form  of  sensorial  insanity  in  which  hallucina- 
tions occur,  and  in  which  the  motor  reaction  is  not  epileptiform 
but  choreic.  There  is  some  reason  to  think  that  temporary  or 
fugitive  hallucinations  are  not  uncommon  in  infancy,  and  that 
the  child  stretching  out  its  hand  and  appearing  to  grasp  at  some 
imaginary  object  is  deceived  by  a  subjective  sensation.  The 
excitation  of  the  latent  residua  of  sensation  takes  place  from 
some  internal  cause,  and  bodily  states  thus  give  rise  to  tempo- 
rary hallucinations  in  children,  without  there  being  any  positive 
disease.  Experimental  proof  of  this  manner  of  origin  is  not 
wanting  :  Dr.  Thore  describes  the  case  of  an  infant,  aged  fourteen 
months  and  a  half,  which  had  accidentally  been  poisoned  by 
the  seeds  of  the  Datura  stramonium  ;  hallucinations  of  sight 
occurred,  as  shown  by  the  motions  -of  the  child,  which  seemed 
to  be  constantly  seeking  for  some  imaginary  objects  in  front  of  it, 
stretching  out  its  hands  and  clinging  to  the  sides  of  the  cradle 
in  order  to  reach  them  better.*  The  most  remarkable  examples 
of  such  condition  of  hallucination  is  afforded,  however,  by  that 
form  of  nightmare  which  some  children  suffer  so  much  from : 
they  begin  shrieking  out  in  the  greatest  terror  without  being 
awake,  though  their  eyes  are  wide  open  ;  they  tremble  with 
fright,  and  do  not  recognise  their  parents  or  others  who  attempt 
to  calm  them ;  and  it  is  some  time  before  the  paroxysm  passes, 
and  they  can  be  pacified.  They  are  for  the  time  possessed  with 
a  vivid  hallucination,  which  terrifies  them  beyond  measure,  and 
which  does  not  readily  subside  ;  in  the  morning,  however,  they 
knew  nothing  of  their  fright,  but  have  forgotten  it  as  the  som- 
nambulist forgets  his  midnight  walk,  or  as  sensation  is  commonly 
forgotten.  Strictly  speaking,  it  is  not  proper  to  say  that  they 
have  forgotten  their  mental  state,  because  the  activity  was  all 
the  while  sensorial,  and,  as  there  was  no  conscious  perception, 
there  could  be  no  conscious  memory.  The  undoubted  and  not 
uncommon  existence  of  this  state  of  vivid  hallucination  in 
cliildren,  when  the  matter  has  certainly  passed  beyond  ordinary 
dreaming,  will  serve  to* prove  how  possible  it  is  that  children 
*  Annales  Medico-Psychologiqne,  1849. 


266  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  [CHAP. 

may  have,  when  awake,  positive  hallucinations.  Some  who  have 
written  upon  this  subject  have  thought  such  a  thing  entirely 
impossible  or  exceptional,  having  been  misled  by  the  ill-grounded 
assumption  that  a  hallucination  must  have  some  necessary  con- 
nexion with  a  delusion.  Certainly  it  must  be,  and  it  is,  rare 
to  meet  with  positive  delusion  in  young  children,  inasmuch  as 
at  that  time  idea  has  not  been  fashioned  in  the  mind ;  but  the 
moment  a  child  has  acquired  a  definite  sensation,  it  is  possible 
for  it  to  have  a  hallucination. 

It  is  in  strict  accordance,  then,  with  physiological  principles, 
as  well  as  with  pathological  observation,  to  affirm  the  existence 
in  children  of  a  variety  of  sensorial  insanity,  which  is  charac- 
terised by  hallucinations,  mostly  of  .vision,  and  sometimes  by 
correspondent  irregular  movements.  Fits  of  involuntary  laughter 
are  often  notable  in  such  cases  :  the  laugh,  or  rather  smile,  of 
the  infant  is  an  involuntary  sensori-motor  movement  before  it 
has  any  notion  of  the  meaning  of  the  smile,  or  any  consciousness 
that  it  is  smiling ;  and  as.  one  of  the  expressions  of  a  morbid 
state  of  things,  therefore,  we  meet  with  the  irregular  and  con- 
vulsive manifestation  of  this  function.  Dr.  Whytt  relates  the 
instance  of  a  boy,  aged  10,  who,  in  consequence  of  a  fall,  had 
violent  paroxysmal  headaches  for  many  days.  After  a  time 
there  occurred  "  fits  of  involuntary  laughter,  between  which  he 
complained  of  a  strange  smell  and  of  pins  pricking  his  nose ; 
he  talked  incoherently,  stared  in  an  odd  manner,"  and  im- 
mediately afterwards  fell  into  convulsions.  He  recovered  on 
this  occasion,  but  two  years  afterwards  was  similarly  attacked : 
he  had  severe  headache,  saw  objects  double,  and  suffered  from  a 
severe  pain  in  the  left  side  of  his  belly,  confined  to  a  spot  not 
larger  than  a  shilling ;  "  sometimes  it  shifted,  and  then  he  was 
seized  with  fatiguing  fits  of  involuntary  laughter."  Ultimately 
he  recovered  partially,  but  never  completely.*  It  is  always 
desirable,  in  cases  of  hallucination  in  children,  to  make  a  close 
examination  of  the  state  of  the  general  sensibility ;  for  per- 
versions or  defects  of  it  will  frequently  be  found  both  where 
there  are  corresponding  perversions  of  a  choreic  character  on  the 
motor  side  and  where  there  is  no  evidence  of  motor  disorder. 
Because  this  form  of  sensorial  insanity  is  often  found  associated 

*  Op.  tit  p.  144. 


II.]  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  267 

with  more  or  less  evidence  of  chorea,  and  because,  as  compared 
with  the  previously  illustrated  epileptiform  variety,  it  has  re- 
lations not  unlike  those  which  chorea  has  to  epilepsy,  it  may  be 
described  as  the  clioreic  variety  of  sensorial  insanity. 

Perhaps  no  more  fitting  opportunity  than  the  present  will 
present  itself  for  reference  to  the  singular  state  of  somnambulism, 
the  phenomena  of  which  illustrate  in  a  striking  manner  that 
independent  action  of  the  sensorial  and  corresponding  motor 
centres  which  plays  so  important  a  part  in  the  early  mental 
life  of  the  child,  and  so  large  a  part  in  the  daily  life  of  the 
adult.  An  individual  appears  to  be  fast  asleep,  and  yet  executes 
complicated  acts  of  some  kind  which  he  could  hardly  do,  and 
certainly  could  not  do  better,  if  he  were  awake  ;  his  highest 
nervous  centres  are  in  abeyance,  and  yet  his  movements  are  as 
skilful  as  if  they  were  under  the  cognizance  and  control  of 
these  supreme  centres.  But  the  man's  senses  are  not  entirely 
asleep,  and  the  organized  motor  reactions  to  impressions  on  these 
senses  are  not  asleep  :  he  is  a  sensori-motor  being,  and  very  much 
in  the  position  of  one  of  those  lower  animals  that  are  destitute 
of  cerebral  hemispheres,  and  which  notwithstanding  are  exceed- 
ingly active  in  their  movements  ;  or  very  much  in  the  position 
of  a  child  before  the  higher  centres  of  idea  have  come  into  action. 
Recently  there  has  come  under  my  observation  a  striking  instance 
of  somnambulism  in  a  young  woman  suffering  from  consumption, 
who  has  on  many  occasions  risen  from  her  bed  in  the  night,  gone 
through  a  sustained  series  of  rather  difficult  acts,  and  returned 
to  bed  without  ever  knowing  what  she  had  been  doing  ;  in  the 
morning  after  such  feats,  however,  she  feels  general  aching  in 
the  limbs,  exhaustion,  and  prostration,  such  as  from  her  descrip- 
tion of  her  suffering  would  appear  to  be  very  like  that  which 
follows  an  epileptic  fit  in  the  night.  One  example  of  what  she 
did  in  her  sleep  may  be  adduced  here :  she  was  engaged  in 
quilting  a  petticoat  for  a  lady,  and  after  a  good  day's  work  went 
to  bed  at  night,  intending  in  the  morning  to  get  up  early  and 
finish  it ;  but,  .when  the  morning  came,  she  was  so  weary  and 
prostrate  that  she  felt  quite  unable  to  rise ;  she  called  her 
mother,  therefore,  and  told  her  to  say,  should  the  lady  send  for 
her  petticoat,  that  she  was  so  ill  that  she  had  not  been  able  to 
finish  it.  The  mother,  wishing  to  see  how  much  still  remained 


268  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  [CHAP. 

to  be  done,  fetched  the  petticoat,  when  it  was  found  to  be 
finished :  the  poor  girl  had  been  up  in  the  night,  and,  seen  of  no 
one,  had  completed  her  task.  Soon  the  long  day's  task  of  life 
will  be  over  with  her,  and  she  will  sleep  well  where  no  troubles 
more  can  reach  her,  and  no  dream  of  work  or  sorrow  disturb 
her  slumbers. 

If  it  were  possible  artificially  to  induce  a  temporary  disorder 
in  the  sensory  and  corresponding  motor  centres  of  the  somnam- 
bulist, such  as  would  give  rise  to  hallucinations  and  answering 
motor  reactions,  while  his  higher  centres  remained  in  abeyance, 
he  would  in  reality  be  put,  according  to  the  degree  of  disorder, 
either  in  the  condition  of  the  child  suffering  from  what  has  been 
described  as  the  choreic  variety  of  sensorial  insanity,  or  in  the 
condition  of  the  man  wTho,  after  a  succession  of  epileptic  fits,  is 
attacked  with  furious  sensorial  insanity.  Suppose,  however, 
that  after  a  moderate  disorder  had  been  artificially  excited  in  the 
somnambulist's  sensorial  centres,  such  as  might  engender  hal- 
lucinations, his  higher  centres  of  cognition  were  to  awake  to 
activity, — what  would  be  the  result  ?  Either  he  would  be  im- 
posed upon  by  the  false  sensations,  and  his  thought  thus  share  in 
the  disorder  of  his  sense ;  or  his  reflection  would  discover  the 
subjective  nature  of  the  hallucination,  and  he  would  then  be 
very  much  in  the  position  of  the  well-known  Nicolai  of  Berlin, 
and  of  others  who,  bike  that  bookseller,  have  suffered  from  hallu- 
cinations of  the  nature  of  which  they  were  quite  conscious. 
Every  one  who  has  observed  himself  with  attention  must  have 
been  conscious  of  occasions  on  which  a  suddenly  occurring  hal- 
lucination has  caused  him  to  make  a  quick  respondent  movement, 
which,  recognising  the  hallucination,  he  has  discovered  to  be  un- 
necessary. But  it  is  different  with  a  very  young  child,  which,  if 
it  is  affected  with  a  hallucination,  must  believe  in  it ;  it  cannot 
correct  sense  by  reflection,  because  the  higher  nervous  centres 
have  not  yet  entered  on  their  full  function.  Hallucinations 
may,  therefore,  exist  temporarily  in  children  without  indicating 
any  serious  disturbance  ;  the  organic  residua  of  sensation  being 
quickened  into  activity  by  an  internal  cause,  before  any  distinct 
perception  of  the  cause  of  the  sensation  has  been  formed. 

Thus  far,  then,  it  is  certain  that  hallucination  may  occur 
in  a  child  before  it  has  acquired  a  definite  idea.     With  each 


li.]  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE'.  269 

succeeding  presentation  of  an  object  to  the  child,  however,  the 
impressions  made  by  it  on  the  different  senses  become  more  and 
more  combined,  so  that  an  idea  of  the  object  is  at  last  organized 
in  the  higher  ideational  centres;  there  is  a  consilience  of  the 
sensory  impressions  into  an  idea,  which  henceforth  makes  it 
possible  for  the  child  to  think  of  the  object  when  it  is  not  present 
before  the  senses,  or  to  have  a  definite  and  adequate  perception 
of  it  when  it  is.  As  development  proceeds,  one  idea  after 
another  is  thus  added  to  the  mind  until  many  simple  ideas  have 
been  organized  in  it;  but  for  a  long  time  these  ideas  remain 
more  or  less  isolated  and  imperfectly  developed ;  there  are  no 
definite  associations  between  them,  and  the  child's  discourse  is 
consequently  incoherent ;  there  is  not  moreover  a  complete  or- 
ganization of  residua,  and  its  memory  is  consequently  fallacious. 
Children,  like  brutes,  live  in  the  present;  their  happiness  or 
misery  being  dependent  upon  impressions  made  upon  the  senses  : 
their  actions  are  direct  reactions  to  impressions ;  the  idea  or 
emotion  excited 'does  not  remain  in  consciousness  and  call  up 
other  ideas  and  emotions,  but  it  is  directly  uttered  in  outward 
action.  Such  a  condition  of  development,  which  is  natural  to 
the  child  before  the  fabric  of  its  mental  organization  has  been 
built  up,  and  to  the  animal  in  which  the  state  of  the  nervous 
system  renders  further  development  impossible,  would,  were  it 
met  with  in  an  European  adult,  represent  idiocy,  or  an  arrest  of 
mental  development  from  morbid  causes. 

So  soon  as  a  definite  idea  has  been  organized  in  the  child's 
mind  a  delusion  is  possible.  But  as  ideas  are  at  first  com- 
paratively few  in  number,  and  as  they  are  very  imperfectly 
associated,  a  derangement  of  the  function  of  their  centres  must 
be  characterised  by  a  very  incoherent  delirium.  Divers  morbid 
ideas  will  then  spring  up  without  coherency ;  and  the  morbid 
phenomena,  wanting  system,  will  correspond,  not  so  much  with 
those  which  in  the  adult  we  describe  as  mania,  as  with  those 
described  as  delirium.  In  the  mania  of  the  adult  there  is 
commonly  a  systematized  delirium,  some  coherency  between  the 
morbid  ideas,  some  method  in  the  madness ;  whereas  in  the 
delirium  from  fever  or  other ^cause,  ideas  spontaneously  arise  in 
consciousness  in  the  most  incoherent  way  :  in  the  young  child  the 
ideas  are  equally  incoherent  by  reason  of  the  absence  of  an  organic 


270  'INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  [CHAP. 

association  between  the  residua.  Let  us  proceed  then  to  test  these 
principles  by  an  examination  of  such  facts  as  are  available. 

As  a  morbid  idea  in  the  child's  mind  has,  by  the  nature  of 
the  case,  but  a  small  range  of  action  upon  other  ideas,  it  will 
tend  to  utter  itself  by  its  other  paths  of  expression  ;  namely,  by 
a  downward  action  upon  the  sensory  ganglia  or  upon  the  move- 
ments. When  it  acts  downwards  upon  the  sensory  ganglia,  it 
gives  rise  to  a  hallucination  ;  and  in  such  case,  as  may  easily  be 
imagined,  it  will  not  always  be  possible  to  determine  whether 
the  hallucination  is  really  secondary  or  primary — whether  it  is 
engendered  indirectly  through  the  morbid  idea  or  directly  by  the 
excitation  of  the  sensory  residua  by  some  organic  cause.  "When 
a  child  of  only  a  few  years  old  sees  figures  of  some  kind  on  the 
wall,  which  have  no  real  existence,  but  disappear  with  apparently 
as  little  reason  as  they  came  there,  the  hallucination  is  most 
likely  owing  to  some  organic  cause  affecting  directly  the  sensory 
ganglia.  But  when  a  child  of  eight  or  nine  years  old,  whose 
head  has  been  wickedly  filled  with  foolish  and  dangerous  notions 
concerning  the  devil  and  hell,  suddenly  sees  the  frightful  face  of 
a  devil  appear  and  threaten  to  eat  him  up,  and  shrieks  in  terrified 
agony,  then  the  hallucination  is  undoubtedly  secondary  to  the 
wilfully  implanted  delusion.  In  a  few  moments  the  phantasm 
disappears,  and  the  child  regains  its  composure.  This  sort  01 
idea-produced  hallucination  occurs  doubtless  frequently  enough 
in  those  nightmares  of  children  already  mentioned. 

This  secondary  manner  of  generation  of  a  hallucination  again 
is  strikingly  illustrated  by  the  occurrence  of  phantasms  before 
the  eyes  of  certain  precocious  children,  which  appear  to  be 
visible  representations  of  the  thoughts  that  are  passing  through 
their  minds  :  what  they  think  that  they  actually  see.  Accord- 
ingly a  sort  of  drama  is  evolved  before  their  eyes,  and  they  live 
for  the  time  in  a  scene  which  is  purely  visionary  as  though  it 
were  quite  real.  "  What  nonsense  are  you  talking,  child  ? "  the 
mother  perhaps  exclaims ;  and  thereupon  the  pageant  vanishes. 
In  delicate  and  highly  nervous  children,  affected  with  mesenteric 
tubercle — and,  perhaps,  also  with  meningeal  tubercle — it  some- 
times happens  that  great  anxiety  is  caused  to  the  mother  by 
the  strange  way  in  which,  during  the  night,  when  outer  objects 
are  shut  out  by  the  darkness,  they  will  talk  as  if  they  were 


II.]  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  271 

surrounded  by  real  events,  or,  as  the  mother  perhaps  puts  it, 
as  if  they  were  light-headed.  They  are  dreaming  while  they 
are  awake ;  though  the  outer  world  is  shut  out,  the  morbid 
deposit  within  acts  as  an  irritating  stimulus  to  the  ganglionic 
nervous  centres,  and  thus  gives  rise  to  an  automatic  activity 
of  them.  Such  hallucinations  may  undoubtedly  be  fugitive 
events  in  the  history  of  any  child  endowed  with  a  highly 
nervous  temperament,  as  in  William  Blake,  the  engraver,  and 
may  not  denote  any  positive  disease ;  but  if  the  habit  grows 
upon  the  child  by  indulgence,  and  the  phantasms  are  regularly 
marshalled  into  a  definite  drama, — as,  for  example,  was  the  case 
with  Hartley  Coleridge, — then  a  condition  of  things  is  initiated 
which  will  in  all  likelihood  ultimately  issue  in  the  degeneration 
of  some  form  of  insanity.*  For  it  is  not  the  natural  course  of 
mental  development  that  ideas,  so  soon  as  they  are  fashioned  in 
the  mind,  should  read  directly  downwards  upon  the  sensory 
ganglia,  and  thus  create  a  visionary  world ;  but,  on  the  contrary, 
it  is  necessary  in  the  progress  of  mental  development  that  ideas 
should  be  completely  organized  within  the  centres  of  conscious- 
ness, and  should  react  upon  one  another  there ;  that  thus,  by  the 
integration  of  the  like  in  perceptions  and  the  differentiation  of 
the  unlike,  accurate  conceptions  of  nature  should  be  formed  and 
duly  combined  in  the  mental  fabric  ;  and  that  the  reaction  upon 
external  nature  should  be  a  definite,  aim-working,  volitional  one. 
Men  like  Hartley  Coleridge  cannot  possibly  have  a  will,  because 
the  reaction  of  their  supreme  nervous  centre  is  prematurely 
expended  in  the  construction  of  toy-works  of  the  fancy ;  the 
state  of  things  corresponds  in  some  sort  with  that  which  obtains 
in  the  spinal  centres  when,  by  reason  of  an  instability  of  nervous 
element,  direct  reactions  take  place  to  impressions,  so  that 
definite  assimilation  and  acquired  co-ordination  are  rendered 
impossible ;  in  both  cases  an  arrest  of  development,  commonly 
the  forerunner  of  more  active  disease,  is  marked.  The  preco- 
cious imagination  of  childhood  should  always  be  restrained  as 
an  actual  danger,  not  fostered  as  a  wonderful  evidence  of  talent, 

*  "  Blake's  first  vision  was  said  to  be  when  he  was  eight  or  ten  years  old ;  it  was 
a  vision  of  a  tree  filled  with  angels.  Mrs.  Blake,  however,  used  to  say— '  You 
know,  dear,  the  first  time  you  saw  God  was  when  you  were  four  years  old,  and  He 
put  His  head  to  the  window  and  set  you  screaming.' " — Gilchrist's  Life  of  Blake. 


272  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  [CHAP. 

and  the  child  should  be  solicited  to  regular  intercourse  with  the 
realities  of  nature,  so  that  by  continued  internal  adaptation  to 
external  impressions  there  may  be  laid  up  in  the  mind  stores  of 
material,  and  that,  by  an  orderly  training,  this  may  be  moulded 
into  true  forms,  according  to  which  a  rightly  developed  imagi- 
nation may  hereafter  work  in  true  and  sober  harmony  with  nature. 

The  difference  between  fancy  and  imagination,  as  Coleridge 
has  very  aptly  remarked,  corresponds  with  the  difference  be- 
tween delirium  and  mania.  The  fancy  brings  together  images 
which  have  no  natural  connexion,  but  are  yoked  together  by 
means  of  some  accidental  coincidence;  while  the  imagination 
combines  images  seemingly  unlike  by  their  essential  relations, 
and  gives  unity  to  variety.  Now  the  precocious  imagination  of 
a  child,  which  sometimes  delights  foolish  parents,  cannot  pos- 
sibly be  anything  more  than  lying  fancy  ;  and  this,  for  exactly 
the  same  reason  as  it  has  already  been  shown  that  the  insanity 
of  children  must  be  a  delirium,  and  cannot  be  a  mania.  Those 
who  like  to  speak  of  faculties  of  the  mind  may  certainly  main- 
tain that  fancy  and  imagination  are  fundamentally  the  same 
faculty ;  if  so,  they  should  bear  in  mind,  however,  that  fancy 
indicates  the  faculty  working  wildly  and  often  mischievously, 
without  adequate  material  and  without  due  training,  and  that 
imagination  represents  the  working  of  the  faculty  when  duly 
supplied  with  proper  material  and  justly  developed  by  a  proper 
training.  In  like  manner,  those  who  consider  closely  and  with- 
out prepossession  the  fundamental  meaning  of  the  character 
which  the  delirium  of  children  has,  will  not  fail  to  recognise  in 
it  the  strongest  evidence  of  the  gradual  organization  of  our 
mental  faculty ;  the  fancy  of  the  sane,  and  the  delirium  of  the 
insane,  child  both  testify  to  the  same  condition  of  things — 
that  which  the  habitual  incoherence  of  a  child's  discourse  also 
evidences. 

In  order  to  exhibit  clearly  the  manner  of  the  action  of  a  morbid 
idea  in  children,  and  to  educe  from  it  a  physiological  lesson,  its 
operation  has  been  somewhat  artificially  separated  from  other 
morbid  phenomena  which  usually  accompany  it.  In  young 
children  it  is  very  rare  to  meet  with  disorder  confined  to  the 
supreme  nervous  centres  ;  for  the  other  centres  are  certain  to 
participate  more  or  less  markedly  in  the  morbid  action.  In 


n.]  IXS4NITY  OF  £ARLY  LIFE. 

chorea,  for  example,  besides  the  disordered  movements  which 
are  its  common  characteristic,  there  are  often  hallucinations 
marking  disorder  of  the  sensorial  centres,  and  motiveless  weeping 
or  laughing,  or  acts  of  mischief  and  violence,  marking  disorder 
of  some  of  the  higher  motor  centres ;  there  are  furthermore  in 
some  cases  mental  excitement  and  incoherency,  which  may 
pass  into  maniacal  delirium,  and  end  fatally,  or  into  chronic 
delirium,  and  end  in  recovery.  The  different  centres  sympathise 
with  one  another ;  and,  according  as  they  minister  to  ideation, 
sensation,  or  movement,  express  their  disorder  in  delirium,  hallu- 
cination, or  spasmodic  movements. 

Let  us  now  proceed,  then,  to  arrange  in  groups  the  different 
forms  of  insanity  that  are  actually  met  with  in  children. 

1.  Monomania,  or  Partial  Ideational  Insanity. — "When  a  mor- 
bid idea  or  delusion  reacts  downwards,  but  not  upon  the  sensory 
ganglia  in  the  way  described,  its  action  is  upon  the  movements, 
and  it  is  realized  in  some  particular  act.  Is  this  kind  of  mono- 
mania ever  met  with  in  children  ?  Certainly  it  is  ;  and,  as  might 
be  predicted  from  a  consideration  of  the  child's  mental  develop- 
ment, chronic  ideational  insanity  will  commonly  be  of  this 
partial  kind.  It  admits  of  no  question,  tbat  the  desperate 
sort  of  monomania  which  is  manifest  in  a  powerful  impulse  to 
some  act  of  violence — the  kind  of  disease  in  which  the  morbid 
idea  attains  to  such  a  nisus  for  outward  reaction  as  to  become 
an  irresistible  impulse — is  met  with  occasionally  in  children. 
Examples  of  children  thus  possessed  with  an  uncontrollable 
impulse  are  given  by  Esquirol :  in  one  case,  a  child,  of  only  five 
or  six  years  old,  made  repeated  attempts  to  kill  its  stepmother, 
who  had  always  treated  it  kindly  ;  in  another  case,  a  child  was 
afflicted  with  a  never-resting  impulse  to  steal  without  having 
need  for,  or  making  any  use  of,  what  it  had  stolen ;  another 
child  was  ever  striving  with  a  perverse  diligence  to  set  fire  to 
whatever  it  could ;  and  another  displayed  a  persistent  longing 
desire  for  self-destruction — a  genuine  suicidal  monomania.  These 
are  indisputable  instances  of  what  have  been  designated  homi- 
cidal monomania,  kleptomania,  pyromania,  and  suicidal  mono- 
mania. Let  the  psychologist  explain  them  how  he  will,  they  are 
in  strict  accord  with  physiological  observation ;  and  their  occur- 
rence at  so  early  a  period  of  life,  where  some  morbid  taint, 
19 


274  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  [CHAP. 

inherited  or  acquired,  can  usually  be  traced,  is  a  strong  argu- 
ment in  favour  of  the  principles  already  laid  down.  Children, 
again,  have  thought  themselves  possessed  with  the  devil,  who 
moved  them  to  perpetrate  the  strangest  acts  ;  and  at  the  time 
of  the  Crusades,  when  the  Western  world  was  infected  with  a 
fanatical  enthusiasm  for  delivering  the  Holy  Sepulchre  from  the 
hands  of  the  infidels,  the  infection  of  the  madness  spread  through 
a  host  of  children,  who  marched  off  to  Jerusalem  "  to  deliver  the 
sepulchre  of  the  Lord,"  most  of  them  perishing  miserably  on  the 
way,  others  of  them  being  sold  as  slaves,  and  none  of  them 
reaching  their  goal. 

2.  Choreic  Delirium,  or  Choreic  Ideational  Insanity. — There  is 
a  choreic  delirium  sometimes  met  with  in  children,  which  appears 
to  be  the  exact  counterpart  of  the  choreic  spasms  that  occur. 
"What  is  sufficiently  striking,  even  to  an  ordinary  observer  of  this 
delirium,  is  its  marked  incoherency,  and  the  manifestly  automatic 
character  of  it.  It  might,  indeed,  appear  that  the  cells  or  groups 
of  cells  of  the  primary  centres  had  been  dislocated  from  their 
connexions,  and  that  each  cell,  or  group  of  cells,  was  acting  on 
its  own  account,  giving  rise  thereby  to  a  sort  of  mechanically 
repeated  and  extremely  incoherent  delirium.  A  boy  of  about 
eleven  years  of  age,  who  came  under  my  care,  was,  after  a  slight 
and  not  distinctly  described  sickness,  suddenly  attacked  with 
this  form  of  delirium ;  he  moved  about  restlessly,  throwing  his 
arms  about  and  repeating  over  and  over  again  such  expressions 
as — "  The  good  Lord  Jesus,"  "They  put  Him  on  the  cross,"  "They 
nailed  His  hands,"  &c. :  it  was  impossible  to  fix  his  attention 
for  a  moment ;  for  he  turned  away,  wandered  aimlessly  about, 
pointing  to  one  hand  and  then  to  the  other,  and  babbling  his 
incoherent  utterances.  As  far  as  could  be  made  out,  there  was 
considerable  insensibility  of  the  skin  over  certain  parts  of  the 
body.  In  two  days,  after  appropriate  treatment,  the  delirium 
passed  off,  and  the  boy  was  quite  himself  again. 

Dr.  Bucknill  relates  the  case  of  a  boy,  aged  twelve,  who  was 
admitted  into  the  Devon  Asylum,  and  who  had  been  affected  all 
his  life  to  some  extent  with  chorea.  A  few  days  before  admission 
he  had  attempted  to  hang  himself,  and  there  was  the  mark  made 
by  the  rope  upon  his  neck.  On  admission,  he  was  acutely 
maniacal,  attempted  to  dash  his  head  against  the  walls,  and, 


it.]  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  275 

when  put  in  the  padded  room,  lay  on  the  floor,  crying — "  Oh,  do 
kill  me  !  Dash  my  brains  out !  Oh,  do  let  me  die  ! "  He  kicked 
and  bit  the  attendants,  and  tried  in  every  way  to  kill  himself : 
his  head  was  hot,  his  pulse  quick,  he  refused  food,  and  did  not 
sleep.  He  completely  recovered  under  proper  treatment  after  a 
few  days. 

These  two  cases  will  suffice  as  illustrations  of  choreic  mania  : 
it  is  only  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  that — as  with  choreic  move- 
ments, so  with  choreic  insanity — there  are  met  with  examples  of 
every  degree  of  convulsive  violence  and  incoherency.  Halluci- 
nations of  the  special  senses  and  perversions  of  general  sensibility 
will  frequently  also  -accompany  the  delirium. 

3.  Catakptoid  Insanity. — Another  form  which  insanity  may 
take  in  childhood  is  that  of  a  more  or  less  complete  ecstasy ;  and 
this  may  be  appropriately  described  as  the  cataleptoid  variety.  It 
generally  occurs  in  young  children :  the  little  patient  lies  perhaps 
for  hours  or  days  seemingly  in  a  sort  of  mystical  contemplation, 
with  limbs  more  or  less  rigid,  or  fixed  in  strange  postures; 
sometimes  there  is  insensibility  to  impressions,  while  in  other 
instances  vague  answers  are  given,  or  there  is  actual  incoherent 
raving;  there  may  be  sudden  bursting  out  into  wild  shrieks. 
These  attacks  are  of  variable  duration,  and  are  repeated  at  vary- 
ing intervals :  they  would  seem  to  represent  a  sort  of  spasm 
of  certain  nervous  centres,  so  that  for  a  time  being  the  body 
becomes  an  automatic  instrument  of  their  activity,  while  all 
voluntary  power  is  in  abeyance.  While,  on  the  one  hand,  there 
are  intermediate  conditions  between  -this  form  of  disease  and 
chorea,  its  attacks,  on  the  other  hand,  sometimes  alternate  with 
true  epileptic  seizures,  and  at  other  times  pass  gradually  into 
them.  In  a  girl  who  came  under  Dr.  West's  treatment  at  the 
age  of  ten  years  and  ten  months,  there  had  been  first  an  attack 
of  general  convulsions  without  any  obvious  cause,  when  she  was 
eight  years  old.  Afterwards  she  was  subject  to  occasional 
attacks  of  great  excitement  of  behaviour,  and  for  six  months 
there  was  a  sort  of  cataleptic  state  in  which  she  stood  immove- 
able  for  one  or  two  minutes,  staring  wildly  or  fixedly,  and 
murmuring  unconnected  words  that  had  reference  to  any  object 
which  she  might  happen  to  see.  About  eleven  months  from  the 
commencement  of  these  attacks  their  character  changed  ;  they 


276  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  [CHAP. 

became  truly  epileptic,  the  child's  conduct  in  the  intervals 
between  the  seizures,  though  sometimes  quite  reasonable,  having 
mostly  something  insane  about  it.*  The  example  may  serve  to 
illustrate  how  closely  related  are  disorders  of  the  different 
nervous  centres  in  children,  as  well  as  to  show  the  hybrid 
character  of  the  diseases  presented,  and  the  artificial  character 
of  the  divisions  usually  made  between  them. 

4.  Epileptic  Insanity. — Not  only  are  the  different  forms  of 
epilepsy  met  with  in  children,  but  the  different  forms  of  insanity 
that  occur  in  connexion  with  epilepsy  are  also  exhibited  in 
early  life.  The  petit  mal  sometimes  lasts  for  many  months  in 
children,  and  then  pa'sses  into  regular  attacks  of  convulsive 
epilepsy ;  the  usual  effect  of  which  is  to  produce  loss  of  memory 
and  more  or  less  dementia.  In  the  case  of  a  young  girl,  aged 
eight  years,  of  good  physical  conformation,  who  came  under  my 
care,  there  seemed  to  have  been  produced  by  epilepsy  an  arrest 
of  mental  development  at  the  sensorial  stage  :  she  was  a  most 
mischievous  little  machine,  never  resting,  but  seizing,  or  at- 
tempting to  seize,  whatever  she  saw;  nowise  content  with 
what  she  caught  hold  of,  but  throwing  it  down  directly  she 
had  got  it,  and  struggling  for  something  else ;  not  amenable 
to  correction  or  instruction,  and  demanding  the  whole  energies 
of  one  person  to  look  after  her :  she  was  an  automatic 
machine  incited  by  sensory  impressions  to  mischievous  and 
destructive  acts. 

As  in  adults,  so  in  children,  an  attack  of  violent  mania,  or  a 
furor  transitorius,  may  precede,  or  take  the  place  of,  an  attack 
of  epilepsy,  representing  in  reality  a  masked  epilepsy.  Children 
of  three  or  four  years  old  are  sometimes  seized  with  sudden 
attacks  of  violent  shrieking,  desperate  stubbornness,  or  furious 
rage,  when  they  bite,  tear,  and  destroy  whatever  they  can ;  these 
seizures  come  on  periodically,  and  may  either  pass  in  the  course 
of  a  few  months  into  regular  epilepsy,  or  may  be  found  to  alter- 
nate with  epileptic  attacks,  representing  a  vicarious  epilepsy. 
Morel  has  met  with  two  cases  in  which  children  fell  into 
convulsions  and  lost  the  use  of  speech  in  consequence  of  a  great 

*  Ueber  Epilepsie,  Blodsinn  und  Irrsein  der  Kinder,  von  Charles  "West, 
M.D. — Journal  fur  Kinderkrankheiten,  vol.  xxiii.  1854.  See  also  a  paper  by 
M.  Delasiauve  iu  Aniwles  Medico- Psychologique,  voL  vii.  1855. 


II.]  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  277 

fear ;  afterwards  a  maniacal  fury,  with  tearing,  destroying,  and 
continual  turbulence,  occurred  :  in  one  case,  the  child  being 
ten  years  and  a  half  old,  epilepsy  followed ;  in  the  other  child, 
aged  five  years,  it  did  not*  One  of  the  boys  in  a  school  was 
attacked  in  the  night,  without  evident  cause,  with  a  sudden 
furor  transitorius  :  he  rushed  wildly  up  and  down  the  dormitory, 
speaking  loudly  but  inarticulately,  so  that  another  of  the  pupils 
got  up  to  quiet  him ;  but  he  seized  the  latter  with  great  violence, 
and,  but  for  assistance,  would  have  strangled  him.  "With  some 
difficulty  he  was  got  to  bed ;  a  true  epileptic  attack  followed ; 
and  in  the  morning  he  knew  nothing  whatever  of  what  had 
happened,  but  felt  weary  and  exhausted-! 

Again,  in  children  as  in  adults,  regular  attacks  of  maniacal 
excitement  may  follow  epilepsy.  Many  such  instances  are  on 
record  ;  but  I  shall  content  myself  here  with  a  singular  example 
of  insanity,  more  cataleptoid  perhaps  than  epileptic,  following 
convulsions,  which  is  quoted  by  Griesinger  from  Kerner : — 
Margaret  B.,  set.  11,  of  a  passionate  disposition,  but  a  pious, 
Christian  child,  was,  without  any  previous  illness,  seized  on 
January  19th  with  convulsive  attacks,  which  continued,  with  few 
and  short  interruptions,  for  two  days.  So  long  as  the  convul- 
sions lasted  the  child  was  unconscious,  twisted  her  eyes,  made 
grimaces,  and  strange  movements  with  her  arms  :  from  the 
21st  January  a  deep  bass  voice  proceeding  from  her  kept 
repeating  the  words,  "  They  are  praying  for  thee."  When  the 
girl  came  to  herself,  she  was  wearied  and  exhausted,  but  knew 
nothing  of  what  had  happened,  only  said  that  she  had  dreamed.  , 
On  the  evening  of  the  22d  January  another  voice,  quite 
different  from  the  bass  one,  spoke  incessantly  while  the  crisis 
lasted— for  half  an  hour,  an  hour,  or  several  hours;  and  was 
only  now  and  then  interrupted  by  the  former  bass  voice  re- 
gularly repeating  the  recitative.  The  second  voice  mani- 

*  Traite  des  Maladies  Mentales,  1860,  p.  102.  He  relates  another  case  of  a 
girl,  set.  11,  who  had  furious  maniacal  attacks,  during  which  she  attempted 
to  kill  her  mother,  and  injure  her  sisters,  and  who  finally  recovered. 

t  Ueber  Mania  Transitoria,  von  Dr.  Ludwig  Meyer.  Virchow's  Archiv,  vol.  viii. 
art.  ix.  He  relates  another  case  of  a  boy,  set.  13,  who  was  subject  to  periodical 
attacks  of  fury,  followed  by  epileptic  convulsions,  and  who  often  had  the  furious 
maniacal  excitement  without  the  convulsions,  illustrating  the  transition  of  mania 
transitoria  into  epilepsy. 


278  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  [CHAP. 

festly  represented  a  different  personality  from  that  of  the  girl, 
distinguishing  itself  in  the  most  exact  manner,  and  speaking  of 
her  in  the  third  person.  In  its  utterances  there  was  not  the 
slightest  confusion  nor  incoherency  observable,  but  all  questions 
were  answered  by  it  coherently.  What,  however,  gave  a  dis- 
tinctive character  to  its  expressions  was  the  moral  or  rather 
immoral  tone  of  them — the  pride,  arrogance,  scorn  and  hatred 
of  truth,  God,  Christ,  that  were  declared.  "I  am  the  Son  of 
God,  the  Saviour  of  the  world :  me  ye  shall  worship,"  the  former 
voice  frequently  repeated.  Scorn  of  all  that  is  sacred,  blasphemy 
against  God  and  Christ,  violent  dislike  of  everything  good,  and 
extreme  rage  at  the  sight  of  any  one  praying,  or  even  of  hands 
folded  as  in  prayer,  expressed  by  the  second  voice — all  these 
might  well  betray  the  work  of  a  strange  spirit  possessing  her, 
even  if  the  pious  voice  had  not  declared  it  to  be  the  voice  of 
a  devil  So  soon  as  this  demon  spoke,  the  countenance  of  the 
girl  changed  in  the  most  striking  manner,  and  assumed  a  truly 
demoniacal  appearance.  She  ultimately  quite  recovered,  a  voice 
crying  out — "  Get  thee  out  of  this  girl,  thou  unclean  spirit." 

5.  Mania. — Although  the  delirium  of  childhood  commonly 
occurs  in  connexion  with  some  form  of  convulsive  disease,  yet 
it  is  possible  for  it  to  occur  from  other  recognised  causes  of 
mania ;  these  in  children  usually  are  blows  on  the  head,  in- 
testinal worms,  and  onanism.  It  is  certainly  surprising  how 
greatly  tolerant  of  injury  the  young  brain  is ;  children  will 
recover  without  any  bad  symptoms  from  an  injury  which  would 
inevitably  prove  fatal  to  the  adult :  in  one  severe  case  of  fracture 
of  the  skull  in  a  child,  which  came  under  my  observation,  the 
bones  loosely  grated  as  in  a  bag  under  the  scalp  whilst  the 
child's  head  was  held,  and  yet  it  recovered  without  any  severe 
symptoms.  Under  the  name  of  Monopathie  furieiise  Guislain 
describes  maniacal  attacks  in  a  young  girl  set.  7,  which  were 
due  to  caries  of  the  nose  following  a  blow.  Other  like  cases  are 
recorded  by  Haslam,  Spurzheim,  Frank,  Burrows,  Perfect,  and 
Eriedreich.  The  most  striking  example  of  mental  derangement 
in  children  which  Morel  ever  met  with  was  in  a  little  girl  set. 
11,  who,  after  the  sudden  disappearance  of  a  disease  of  the 
skin,  exhibited  choreic  symptoms,  and  soon  afterwards  those-  of 
true  maniacal  fury.  SJie  tried  to  kill  her  mother,  and  had  nearly 


ii.]  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  2/9 

drowned  one  of  her  sisters  by  throwing  her  into  a  pond  :  in  her 
paroxysms  she  displayed  a  strength  almost  incredible,  and  it  is 
.  scarcely  possible  to  communicate  an  adequate  idea  of  the  de- 
structive tendencies  of  the  little  being.  She  recovered  after  a 
fever,  when  all  medical  treatment  had  failed.  Certain  acute 
diseases,  as  for  example  typhus,  may  of  course  give  rise  to 
delirium  in  the  child  just  as  in  the  adult. 

6.  Melancholia.  —  This  form  of  depression  is  met  with  in 
children  both  with  and  without  definite  delusion  or  morbid 
impulse.  Without  doubt  children  differ  naturally  in  liveliness 
of  disposition ;  but  it  sometimes  happens  that  depression  arrives 
at  such  a  pass  even  in  very  young  children  as  to  constitute  a 
genuine  melancholia.  In  such  case  the  child  whines  and  wails 
on  all  occasions,  and  whatever  impression  is  made  upon  it  seems 
to  be  followed  by  a  painful  feeling :  the  mother  brings  it  for 
medical  advice ;  for,  as  she  complains,  it  thrives  not,  it  rests  not 
either  by  night  or  day,  it  is  continually  crying,  and  nothing 
calms  it ;  'there  is  no  living  with  it,  and  she  is  almost  worn  out 
with  anxiety.  Such  symptoms  mark  a  constitutional  defect  of 
nervous  element,  whereby  an  emotional  or  sensational  reaction 
of  a  painful  kind  follows  all  impressions ;  the  nervous  or  psy- 
chie-al  tone  is  radically  infqcted  with  some  vice  of  constitution, 
so  that  every  impression  is  painful ;  and,  according  to  my 
experience,  the  cause  of  the  defect  in  a  great  many  instances 
is  inherited  syphilis.  At  any  rate  remarkably  beneficial  results 
often  in  such  cases  follow  the  treatment  for  hereditary  syphilis. 
No  doubt  other  causes  besides  syphilis  may  give  rise  to  a  like 
morbid  condition  of  nervous  element. 

With  the  deep  melancholic  depression  there  may  be  asso- 
ciated, in  older  children,  a  distinct  delusion  of  some  kind.  A 
boy  who  from  his  fifth  year  had  been  rather  peculiar  in  his 
behaviour,  standing  still  occasionally  without  apparent  reason  in 
the  street  and  not  moving  again  without  considerable  pressure, 
was,  when  aged  twelve,  afflicted  with  positive  melancholia  and 
delusions  of  suspicion.  He  was  extremely  depressed,  and  his 
manner  indicated  the  greatest  fear ;  he  was  prone  to  weep 
constantly,  and  was  in  great  dread  of  his  fellow-scholars  and  of 
his  teacher,  all  of  whom,  he  thought,  suspected  him  of  anything 
wrong  that  happened  to  ba  done — if  a  theft  were  committed,  he 


280  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  [CHAP. 

was  sure  that  he  was  suspected  to  be  the  thief.  He  was  restless 
at  night,  and  often  sighed  and  uttered  unconnected  words  in  his 
sleep.  In  five  weeks  he  was  said  to  have  recovered,  but  there 
still  remained  eccentricities  of  conduct :  if  he  kicked  a  stone,  he 
must  return  to  kick  it  twice  more;  if  he  spat  once,  he  must 
spit  twice  more ;  if  he  had  written  a  word  incorrectly,  he  must 
repeat  the  correction.  Of  these  peculiarities  he  was  quite  con- 
scious, and  struggled  against  them,  but  without  avail ;  after  great 
restlessness  and  mental  disquietude  he  was  ultimately  obliged 
to  give  way  to  them.*  In  other  like  cases,  morbid  notions  with 
regard  to  religion  may  be  the  exponents  of  the  emotional  dis- 
turbance of  psychical  tone. 

Perhaps  the  most  striking  form  in  which  the  melancholia 
of  children  manifests  itself  is  by  suicide.  So  strange  and 
unnatural  a 'thing  does  it  seem  that  a  child  of  eight  or  nine 
years  of  age  should,  world-weary,  destroy  its  own  life,  that  one 
is  apt  to  consider  the  fact  inexplicable.  Such  act  of  suicide 
is  certainly  done  sometimes  under  a  sudden  impulse  -from  the 
dread  of  punishment  or  after  the  infliction  of  punishment,  or  it 
is  perhaps  deliberately  resolved  upon 'in  a  state  of  sadness  and 
depression  consequent  upon  continued  ill-treatment  by  a  brutal 
schoolmaster  or  parent.f  Falret  mentions  the  case  of  a  boy 
of  eleven  years  of  age,  who  was  driven  by  the  ill-treatment 
of  his  teacher  into  such  a  state  of  melancholia  that  he  deter- 
mined to  starve  himself,  and  made  repeated  attempts  at  suicide 
by  drowning.  This  premature  disgust  of  life  will  most  often 
be  found  to  be  the  result  of  some  ancestral  taint,  whereby  the 
child's  nervous  constitution  is  inherently  defective,  and  disposed 
to  perverted  feeling  and  irregular  reaction.  The  question  of 
hereditary  taint  is  in  reality  the  important  question  in  an 
examination  of  the  insanity  of  early  life. 

7.  Affective  Insanity,  or  Moral  Insanity. — In  the  majority  of 
instances  the  affective  insanity  of  early  life  might  justly  be 
described  as  hereditary ;  but  there  are  some  cases  in  which 
the  morbid  condition  of  nervous  element  which  manifests  itself 
in  extreme  moral  perversion  is  not  inherited  but  observably 

*  Irrsein  bei  Kinder,  von  Dr.  Beckham. 

•(•  fltude  sur  le  Suicide  chez  les  Enfants,  par  Durand  Fardel. — Annales 
Medico-Psychologique,  1855. 


n.]  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  281 

acquired  by  reason  of  vicious  habits  of  self-abuse.  It  is 
not  correct,  therefore,  to  describe  all  cases  of  so-called  moral 
insanity  in  children  as  examples  of  hereditary  insanity.  I 
prefer  to  use  the  word  affective  to  the  word  moral,  because  the 
latter  term  is  very  vague,  and  implying,  as  it  does,  a  conscious- 
ness, is  often  inappropriate,  and  always  objectionable:  the 
affective  life,  or  feeling,  on  the  other  hand,  mirrors  the  real 
nature  of  the  individual ;  the  term  affective  insanity  will,  there- 
fore, appropriately  express  the  fundamental  vice  of  nervous 
element  in  such  case. 

The  examples  of  affective  insanity  in  early  life  fall  naturally 
into  two  divisions :  (a)  the  first  includes  all  those  instances 
in  which  there  is  a  strange  perversion  of  some  fundamental 
instinct,  or  a  more  strange  appearance  of  some  quite  morbid 
impulse  ;  and  (&)  the  second  division  comprises  all  those  cases 
of  systematic  moral  perversion  in  which  there  often  seems  to 
the  onlooker  to  be  wilful  wickedness.  The  former  might  be 
described  as  the  instinctive  variety  of  affective  insanity ;  the 
latter  as  moral  insanity  proper. 

(a)  Instinctive  Insanity. — What  are  the  inborn  instincts  of 
mankind  ?  The  instinct  of  self-conservation,  which  is  truly  the 
law  of  the  existence  of  living  matter  as  such,  and  the  instinct 
for  "propagation  which  provides  for  the  continuous  existence 
of  life,  and  is,  therefore,  in  some  sort  a  secondary  manifesta- 
tion of  the  self-conservative  instinct.  Now  the  instinct  of  self- 
conservation  is  manifested  not  only  by  individual  organic 
element,  humble  or  exalted,  but  it  is  manifest  in  all  the 
phenomena  of  vitality,  conscious  or  unconscious :  it  is,  as 
already  seen,  at  ihe  foundation  of  all  the  passions,  which  are 
fundamentally  determined  according  as  impressions  produce 
gratification  of  self  or  are  painful  to  self.  Children  are  of 
necessity  extremely  selfish ;  for  it  is  the  instinct  of  their  being 
to  appropriate  from  without,  to  the  end  that  development  may 
take  place :  a  baby  is  the  only  king,  as  has  been  said,  because 
everybody  must  accommodate  himself  to  him,  while  he  accom- 
modates himself  to  nobody.  Associated,  however,  as  necessarily 
correlate  with  the  instinct  of  appropriation  whereby  what  is 
grateful  to  self  is  assimilated,  is  plainly  a  destructive  or  repul- 
sive instinct  or  impulse  whereby  what  is  not  grateful  to  self  is 


282  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  [CHAP. 

rejected,  got  rid  of,  or  destroyed.  The  infant  rejects  the  mother's 
breast  if  from  some  cause,  internal  or  external,  the  milk  is  not 
grateful  to  it ;  by  crying  and  struggling  it  strives  to  get  rid  of  a 
painful  impression  which  may  happen  to  be  affecting  it,  as  the 
Gregarina  shoots  away  from  a  stimulus,  or  as  a  snail  retracts  its 
protruded  horns  when  they  are  suddenly  touched  ;  and  when  it 
is  a  little  older,  it  destroys  or  attempts  to  destroy  what  is  not 
pleasing  to  it.  To  talk  about  the  purity  and  innocency  of  a 
child's  mind  is  a  part  of  that  poetical  idealism  and  willing 
hypocrisy  by  which  man  ignores  realities  and  delights  to  walk 
in  a  vain  show.  The  purity  and  innocence  of  the  child's  mind, 
in  so  far  as  they  exist,  testify  to  the  absence  of  mind  :  and  the 
impulses  which  actually  move  it  are  the  selfish  impulses  of 
passion.  "  A  boy,"  says  Plato,  "  is  the  most  vicious  of  nil  wild 
beasts  ;  "  or  again,  as  it  has  been  put, "  a  boy  is  better  unborn  than 
untaught."  By  nature  sinful  above  everything,  and  desperately 
wicked,  man  acquires  a  knowledge  of  good  through  evil ;  his 
passions  are  refined  and  developed  through  wider  considerations 
of  interest  and  foresight;  the  history  of  mental  development 
begins  with  the  lowest  passions,  which  circulate  as  an  under- 
current in  every  life,  and  frequently  come  to  the  surface  in  a 
very  turbulent  way  in  many  lives.  Evil  is  good  in  the  making 
as  vice  is  virtue  in  the  making.  "  I  cannot  praise,"  continues 
Milton,  after  saying  that  we  know  good  by  evil,  "  a  fugitive  and 
cloistered  virtue,  unexercised  and  unbreathed,  that  never  sallies 
out  and  sees  her  adversary,  but  slinks  out  of  the  race  where  that 
immortal  garland  is  to  be  run  for,  not  without  dust  or  heat. 
Assuredly  we  bring  not  innocence  into  the  world,  we  bring  im- 
purity much  rather :  that  which  purifies  us  is  trial,  and  trial  is 
by  what  is  contrary  ...  That  virtue  therefore  which  is  a  young- 
ling in  the  contemplation  of  evil,  and  knows  not  the  utmost  that 
vice  promises  to  her  followers,  and  rejects  it,  is  but  a  blank 
virtue,  not  a  pure ;  her  whiteness  is  but  an  excremental,  ad- 
ventitious whiteness." 

"\Yhcn  insanity  is  met  with  in  the  young  child,  we  observe 
what  we  do  in  the  adult  under  the  same  circumstances — 
passion  in  all  its  naked  deformity  and  in  all  its  exaggerated 
exhibition.  The  instincts,  appetites,  or  passions,  call  them 
;is  we  may,  manifest  themselves  in  unblushing,  extreme,  and 


ii.]  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  283 

perverted  action ;  the  veil  of  any  control  which  discipline  may 
have  fashioned  is  rent ;  the  child  is  as  the  animal,  and  reveals 
its  animal  nature  with  as  little  shamefacedness  as  the  monkey 
indulges  its  passions  in  the  face  of  all  the  world.  As  in  the 
child  of  three  or  four  years  old  there  is  as  a  rule  only  the 
instinct  of  gratifying  itself,  involved  in  which  is  the  effort  to 
reject  or  destroy  what  is  not  agreeable,  its  disease,  if  it  become 
insane,  will  be  exhibited  in  a  perverse  and  unceasing  appro- 
priation of  whatever  it  sees,  and  in  destructive  attacks  upon 
whatever  it  can  destroy.  Eefuse  it  what  it  grasps  at,  and  it 
will  scream,  bite,  and  kick  with  a  frantic  energy:  give  it  the 
object  which  it  is  striving  for,  and  it  will  smash  it  if  it  can  :  it 
is  a  destructive  little  machine  which,  being  out  of  order,  lays 
hold  of  what  is  suitable  and  what  is  unsuitable,  and  subjects 
both  alike  to  its  desperate  action.  Haslam  reports  a  case  of 
this  kind  in  a  girl,  aged  three  and  a  quarter  years,  who  had 
become  mad  at  two  and  a  half  years  of  age,  after  inoculation  for 
small-pox.  Her  mother's  brother  was,  however,  an  idiot,  though 
her  parents  were  sane  and  undiseased.  This  creature  struggled 
to  get  hold  of  everything  which  she  saw,  and  cried,  bit,  and 
kicked  if  she  was  disappointed.  Her  appetite  was  voracious, 
and  she  would  devour  any  sort  of  food  without  discrimination ; 
she  would  rake  out  the  fire  with  her  fingers,  and  seemed  to  forget 
that  she  had  been  burnt;  she  passed  her  urine  and  faeces 
anywhere.  She  could  not  be  taught  anything,  and  never 
improved.* 

The  most  striking  manifestation  of  the  destructive  impulse 
which  sometimes  reaches  such  an  extreme  degree  in  the  madness 
of  childhood  is  afforded  by  the  instance  of  homicidal  impulse. 
"  A  girl,  aged  five  years,  conceived  a  violent  dislike  to  her  step- 
mother, who  had  always  treated  her  kindly,  and  to  her  little 
brother,  both  of  whom  she  repeatedly  attempted  to  kiU."f 
Here  there  was  a  sort  of  conscious  design  apparent  in  the  act ; 
but  it  is  obvious  that  the  further  back  in  mental  development 
we  go,  the  less  of  conscious  design  will  there  be  in  the  morbid 
manifestation  of  the  inborn  impulse.  Moreover,  in  the  case  of 
homicidal  impulse  in  a  young  child,  the  consciousness  of  the  end 

*  Observations  on  Madness. 

t  Esquirol,  Traite  des  Maladies  Mentalea. 


284  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  LCHAP, 

or  aim  of  the  act  must  at  best  be  of  a  very  vague  and  imperfect 
kind  :  the  child  is  driven,  by  an  impulse  of  which  it  can  give  no 
account,  to  a  destructive  act,  the  real  nature  of  which  it  does  not 
appreciate:  a  natural  instinct  is  exaggerated  and  perverted  by 
disorder  of  the  nerve  centre,  and  the  character  of  its  morbid 
manifestation  is  often  determined  by  accidents  of  external  cir- 
cumstances ;  the  child  is  driven  by  an  automatic  impulse  to  kill 
its  stepmother  as  it  would  strive  to  kill  a  canary  bird  or  to 
destroy  crockery  ware,  the  impulse  being  as  much  its  master  as 
the  convulsion  of  its  limb  is  in  chorea.  Many  cases,  again,  are 
on  record  of  older  children  who  have  displayed  a  hideous  and 
uncontrollable  propensity  to  acts  of  cruelty  and  destruction, 
practised  on  such  creatures  as  were  not  too  powerful  to  be  their 
victims. 

Because  of  the  variety  of  forms  which  the  morbid  manifes- 
tations of  perverted  instinct  may  take,  it  sometimes  happens 
that  a  young  child  very  much  resembles  a  monkey  in  its  conduct, 
as  it  does  in  its  wizened  and  old-fashioned  face.  It  may  dis- 
play a  wonderful  talent  for  mimicry,  a  precocious  skill  in  lying 
with  all  the  ease  of  an  instinct,  and  a  positive  faculty  for  thieving 
which  is  quite  natural  to  it.  Of  the  best  thieves  as  of  the  best 
poets  it  may  in  truth  be  said  that  they  are  born,  not  made. 
Though  wre  are  apt  to  look  on  such  precocious  viciousness  as 
singular  and  inexplicable,  a  little  reflection  will  show  that  under 
conditions  of  disease  it  is  just  as  natural  in  the  child  as  it  is  in 
the  monkey  under  conditions  of  normal  development. 

Thus  much  concerning  those  phenomena  of  insanity  in  chil- 
dren that  spring  from  the  perversion  of  the  self-conservative 
impulse.  Let  me  now  say  a  few  words  with  regard  to  the  per- 
version of  the  instinct  of  propagation.  It  is. necessary  first  to 
guard  against  a  possible  objection  that  this  instinct  is  not  mani- 
fest till  puberty,  by  the  distinct  assertion  that  there  are  frequent 
manifestations  of  its  existence  throughout  early  life,  both  in 
animals  and  in  children,  without  there  being  any  consciousness 
of  the  aim  or  design  of  the  blind  impulse.  "Whosoever  avers 
otherwise  must  have  paid  very  little  attention  to  the  gambols  of 
young  animals,  and  must  be  strangely  or  hypocritically  oblivious 
of  the  events  of  his  own  early  life.  It  is  at  puberty  that  the 
instinct  makes  its  appearance  in  the  consciousness  of  man,  and 


IT.]  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE  285 

thereupon  generates  knowledge  of  its  aim,  and  craves  for  means 
of  gratification ;  in  like  manner  as,  in  the  course  of  development 
through  the  ages,  the  blind  procreative  instinct  which  is  im- 
manent in  animal  nature  finally  undergoes  a  marvellous  evo- 
lution within  human  consciousness. 

As  we  have  exhibitions  of  this  blind  impulse  in  the  healthy 
child,  it  is  quite  natural  to  look  for  exaggerated  and  perverted 
manifestations  of  it  in  the  insane  child.  These  we  do  not  fail  to 
meet  with :  while  the  enthusiastic  idealist  is  greatly  shocked  by 
disgusting  exhibitions  of  unnatural  precocity  in  children  of  three 
or  four  years  of  age,  and  exclaims  against  them  as  if  they  were 
unaccountable  and  monstrous,  they  are  not  without  interest  to 
the  scientific  observer,  who  sees  in  them  valuable  instances  on 
which  to  base  his  generalizations  concerning  man,  not  as  an  ideal 
but  as  a  real  being.  In  the  Philosophical  Transactions  for  1745, 
is  the  account  of  a  boy,  aged  only  two  years  and  eleven  months, 
who  displayed  a  remarkable  sexual  precocity.  Esquirol  quotes 
the  case  of  a  girl,  aged  three  years,  who  was  constantly  putting 
herself  into  the  most  indecent  attitudes,  and  used  to  practise  the 
lewdest  movements  against  any  piece  of  furniture.  At  first  the 
parents  thought  nothing  particular  of  it,  but  finding  the  practice 
continued,  and  of  unmistakeable  significance,  they  tried  every 
means  in  their  power  to  prevent  it,  but  without  avail.  In 
church  or  anywhere  at  the  sight  of  an  agreeabfe  object  there 
was  the  same  abandonment,  ending  in  a  general  spasm.  The 
child  confessed  to  a  positive  pleasure  from  the  acts,  continued 
them  as  she  grew  up,  and,  though  ultimately  married,  was  a 
regular  nymphomaniac.  The  greatest  salacity  was  always  mani- 
fested from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  spring.*  Other  similar 
examples  of  this  sort  of  instinctive  insanity  might  easily  be 
adduced.  The  afflicted  child  has  no  true  consciousness  of  the 
import  of  its  precocious  acts :  certain  attitudes  and  movements 
are  the  natural  gesture-language  of  certain  internal  states ;  and 
it  is  little  more  than  an  organic  machine  automatically  impelled 
by  disordered  nerve  centres. 

(6)  Moral  Insanity. — This  variety  of  affective  insanity  might 
be  illustrated  by  numerous  examples  of  all  degrees  of  severity, 
ranging  from  what  might,  not  without  reason,  be  described  as 
*  See  also  Morel's  "  Etudes  Cliniques  sur  les  Maladies  Mentales,"  1852. 


286  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  [CHAP. 

viciousness  to  those  extremer  manifestations  which  pass  far 
beyond  the  bounds  of  what  any  one  would  call  wickedness.  In 
the  spring  of  1827,  Dr.  Prichard  was  asked  to  see  the  daughter 
of  a  farmer,  in  some  members  of  whose  family  insanity  existed. 
She  was  a  little  girl,  aged  seven,  and  was  described  as  having 
been  quick  at  apprehension,  lively,  affectionate,  and  intelligent 
A  great  change,  however,  took  place  in  her  conduct :  she  became 
rude,  vulgar,  abrupt,  and  perfectly  unmanageable ;  doing  no 
work,  running  about  the  fields,  and,  if  rebuked,  very  abusive  and 
extremely  passionate.  Her  appetite  was  perverted  so  that  she 
preferred  raw  vegetables  to  her  proper  food ;  and  she  would 
sleep  on  the  cold  and  wet  ground  rather  than  upon  her  bed, 
Her  parents  had  no  control  over  her,  and  she  was  persistently 
cruel  to  her  sisters,  pinching  them  when  she  could  do  so  without 
being  observed.  She  had  a  complete  knowledge  of  persons 
and  things,  and  recollected  all  that  she  had  learned.  Her  eyes 
glistened  brilliantly ;  the  conjunctiva  was  reddened ;  her  head 
was  hot,  her  extremities  were  cold,  and  her  bowels  disordered ; 
there  was  a  disagreeable  odour  of  the  body.  Dr.  Prichard  took 
her  into  his  own  house,  as  she  was  getting  worse  at  home.  "  At 
this  time  she  had  taken  to  eat  her  own  faeces,  and  to  drink 
her  urine,  and  she  would  swear  like  a  fishwoman  and  destroy 
everything  within  her  reach;  yet  she  was  fully  conscious  of 
everything  she  did,  and  generally  appeared  to  know  well  that 
she  had  done  wrong."  After  doing  something  wrong  she  would 
exclaim,  "  Well,  Mrs.  H.,  I  have  done  it.  I  know  you  will  be 
angry  ;  but  I  can't  help  it,  and  I  could  not  let  it  alone  until 
I  had."  Among  her  pleasures  was  that  of  dirtying  herself  as 
frequently  as  she  had  clean  clothes  ;  indeed,  "  she  would  rarely 
pass  her  excrements  into  the  proper  place,  but  reserved  them 
for  the  carpet  of  the  sitting-room,  or  for  her  own  clean  clothes." 
"  At  other  tunes  she  was  so  far  conscious  of  her  situation  as  to 
cry  bitterly,  and  express  her  fears  that  she  would  become  like 
her  aunt,  who  was  a  maniac.  In  addition  to  all  these  indi- 
cations she  had  stolen  everything  which  she  thought  would  be 
cared  for,  and  either  hid  or  destroyed  it ;  and  swore  in  language 
which  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  that  such  a  child  could  ever 
have  heard."  There  was  no  fixed  idea  which  influenced  her 
conduct ;  she  acted  "  from  the  impulse  of  her  feelings,  and  these 


n.]  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  287 

were  unnatural,  and  perverted  by  disease."     After  two  months 
she  recovered.* 

Haslam  relates  the  following  case  of  a  young  gentleman,  aged 
ten,  in  whose  ancestors  no  insanity  was  admitted.  When  only 
two  years  old,  he  was  so  mischievous  and  uncontrollable  that  he 
was  sent  from  home  ;  and  until  he  was  nine  years  old  he  con- 
tinued "  the  creature  of  volition  and  the  terror  of  the  family," 
and  was  indulged  in  every  way :  he  tore  his  clothes,  broke  what- 
ever he  could  break,  and  often  would  not  take  his  food.  Severe 
discipline  was  tried,  but  in  vain ;  and  the  boy  was  ultimately 
sent  to  a  lunatic  asylum.  There  was  deficient  sensibility  of  the 
skin.  He  had  a  very  retentive  memory  with  regard  to  matters 
which  he  had  witnessed,  but  was  attracted  only  by  fits  and 
starts,  so  that  he  would  not  learn  :  he  was  "  the  hopeless  pupil 
of  many  masters,"  breaking  windows,  crockery,  and  anything  else 
which  he  could  break.  Whenever  the  cat  came  near  him  he  plucked 
out  its  whiskers  with  wonderful  skill  and  rapidity,  saying,  "I 
must  have  her  beard  off,"  and  then  commonly  threw  the  animal 
on  to  the  fire  or  through  the  window.  He  was  quite  insensible 
to  kindness,  and  never  played  with  other  boys.  "  Of  his  own 
disorder  he  was  sometimes  sensible :  he  would  often  express  a 
wish  to  die,  for  he  said  very  truly,  '  God  had  not  made  him 
like  other  children ; '  and  when  provoked,  he  would  threaten 
to  destroy  himself."  No  improvement  took  place.  A  case  in 
some  regards  similar  is  quoted  by  Moreau  from  Eenaudin,  under 
whose  care  it  was : — A  boy,  whose  intelligence  and  behaviour 
were  usually  of  an  ordinary  character,  was  subject  every  now  and 
then  to  a  positive  mania  of  acts,  without  any  mental  incoherence.! 
When  these  attacks  came  on  him  he  was  quite  incorrigible,  and 
in  consequence  of  them  he  had  been  expelled  from  several 
schools.  After  several  unsuccessful  trials  at  discipline,  he  was 
at  last  sent  to  an  asylum.  There  he  answered  quite  intelligently, 
but  wept  and  was  silent  when  spoken  to  about  his  bad  conduct : 
pressed  upon  this  subject,  he  said  that  he  could  not  help  it. 
The  interesting  circumstance  was  that  there  was  a  complete  in- 
sensibility of  the  skin  at  the  time  of  the  attacks  of  irresistible 

*  On  the  Different  Forms  of  Insanity  in  relation  to  Jurisprudence,  by  J.  C. 
Prichard,  M.D.  1842. 

t  Moreau's  Psychologic  Morbide,  p.  313. 


288  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  [CHAP. 

violence,  and  that,  in  his  docile  and  affectionate  intervals,  the 
sensibility  of  the  skin  was  natural.  The  acts  of  violence  were 
of  so  extreme  a  character  that,  says  the  reporter,  "  we  were  able 
to  satisfy  ourselves  that  they  might  go  as  far  as  murder." 

These  examples  may  suffice  as  illustrations  of  a  form  of 
disease  which  undoubtedly  occurs  in  early  life,  and  which, 
indeed,  is  more  readily  acknowledged  when  it  is  met  with  in 
such  young  children  than  when  it  is  met  with  in  the  adult. 
The  extreme  acts  of  precocious  wickedness  seem  so  inconsistent 
with  the  immaturity  of  childhood  that  they  are  readily  accounted 
unnatural,  and  are  attributed  to  disease.  However,  to  call  them 
the  result  of  disease  is  not  to  explain  them,  nor  to  cancel  the 
need  of  an  explanation ;  and  to  designate  them  unnatural  is  not 
to  remove  them  from  the  domain  of  natural  law.  Whosoever 
scrupulously  traces  these  acts  as  the  necessary  consequences  of 
certain  coefficient  causes  implied  in  the  vitiated  constitution  of 
the  nervous  element  of  the  child,  and  thus  banishes,  as  he  must 
do,  the  notion  of  witting  and  wilful  vice,  will  be  prepared  to 
recognise  the  possibility  of  like  physical  conditions  in  the  adult 
being  the  agents  in  producing  like  morbid  effects.  Instead  of 
dismissing  a  thing  from  the  mind  after  labelling  it  as  unnatural 
or  morbid,  without  being  at  the  pains  to  attach  any  definite 
meaning  to  such  words,  it  is  most  necessary  to  strive  to  get 
precise  ideas  as  to  its  nature  and  causation,  so  that,  in  the  event 
of  a  similar  effect  being  at  some  time  observed,  there  may  be 
light  thrown  upon  the  hidden  causes  and  true  relations,  in 
place  of  vague  or  unfounded  assumption  agreeable  only  to 
ignorant  prejudice. 

What  is  of  the  utmost  importance  to  be  borne  in  mind  in  all 
cases  of  affective  insanity,  and  especially  of  that  variety  which  we 
have  described  as  moral  insanity,  is  the  question  of  hereditary 
taint.  As  the  nature  of  man  has  been  slowly  developed  into 
that  which  it  now  is  by  a  progressive  fashioning  through 
generations,  so  by  a  retrograde  descent  may  it  pass  back- 
wards to  a  lower  stage :  the  degeneration  which  the  individual 
who  becomes  insane  without  having  had  any  predisposition  to 
insanity  represents,  may  observably  become  the  inherent  defect 
or  taint  of  the  nervous  element  of  his  progeny,  so  that  the 
acquired  or,  as  it  were,  accidental  irregularity  of  the  parent 


nj  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  289 

determines  a  natural  predisposition  to  irregular,  perverse,  and 
discordant  acts  in  the  offspring.  The  progress  of  organic  develop- 
ment through  the  ages  is  a  progressive  internal  specialization  in 
relation  to  external  nature ;  the  human  organism,  as  the  highest 
organic  development,  has  the  most  special  and  complex  relations 
with  the  external ;  and  the  highest  mental  development,  as  the 
supreme  development  of  the  human  organism,  represents  the 
completest  expression  of  the  most  special  and  complex  harmony 
between  man  and  nature.  Now  this  harmony  will  plainly  be 
destroyed,  and  a  discord  produced  instead,  by  that  inherent 
defect  of  nervous  element  which  an  hereditary  taint  implies  ; 
for  it  implies,  as  we  have  seen,  a  predisposition  to  discordant 
action.  Accordingly,  there  is  witnessed  in  the  infant,  long 
before  any  responsibility  attaches  to  its  acts,  either  a  congenital 
inability  to  respond  to  external  impressions,  whereby  idiocy 
of  greater  or  less  degree  is  the  consequence,  or  a  degenerate 
state  of  nervous  element,  whereby  the  natural  assimilation  of 
impressions  and  the  fitting  reaction  to  them  are  seriously  inter- 
fered with.  In  the  latter  case  there  is  a  positive  defect  in  the 
composition  or  constitution  of  nervous  element ;  its  degeneration 
means  the  loss  of  its  kind  and  the  existence  of  an  inferior  kind  ; 
and  accordingly  its  fundamental  self-conservative  impulse,  as 
living  matter  of  specific  quality,  is  abolished.  The  strange 
perversions  of  the  child's  appetites  and  instinctive  strivings 
plainly  reveal  this  ;  for,  instead  of  displaying  an  aversion  from 
what  is  injurious  and  rejecting  it,  the  young  creature  posi- 
tively seizes  with  eager  appetite  what  is  most  baneful.  In  all 
the  degrees  and  kinds  of  healthy  life  we  witness  in  operation 
the  attraction  of  what  is  suitable  to  growth  and  development 
and  the  repulsion  of  what  is  unsuitable  :  in  the  lowest  forms 
of  life  we  describe  them  simply  as  attraction  and  repulsion,  or 
assimilation  and  rejection ;  as  we  rise  higher  in  the  scale  of  life 
the  attraction  becomes  appetite  and  the  repulsion  becomes  aver- 
sion ;  higher  still  the  attraction  is  desire  or  love,  the  repulsion 
is  dislike  or  hate,  although,  if  there  is  any  character  of  un- 
certainty about  the  evBnt,  hope  and  fear  are  used  to  express  the 
opposite  strivings  ;  and  the  last  and  highest  development  of 
these  fundamental  impulses  is  willing  and  unwillingness.  But 
in  the  child  bora  with  a  strong  predisposition  to  insanity  there 
20 


290  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  [CHAP. 

is  a  want  of  this  pre-established  harmony  between  the  individual 
constitution  and  external  nature :  the  morbid  creature  devours 
with  eager  appetite  the  greatest  trash,  and  rakes  out  the  fire 
with  its  fingers ;  it  desires  passionately  and  frantically  struggles 
for  what  is  detrimental  to  it,  and  rejects  or  destroys  what  is 
suitable,  and  should,  were  it  rightly  constituted,  be  agree- 
able ;  it  loves  nothing  but  destructive  and  vicious  acts,  which 
are  the  expressions  of  an  advanced  degradation,  and  hates  that 
which  would  further  its  development,  and  is  necessary  to  its 
existence  as  a  social  being.  By  reason  of  its  physical  consti- 
tution it  is  then  a  fundamental  discord  in  nature ;  and  all  its 
perverse  reactions  are  the  utterances  of  a  gradually  proceeding 
course  of  deterioration  whereby  it  ultimately  goes  to  destruction : 
it  cannot  assimilate  nature,  and  nature  will  therefore,  sooner  or 
later,  assimilate  it.  Meanwhile,  as  a  diseased  element  in  the 
social  organism,  it  must  be  isolated  or  removed  for  the  good  of 
the  organism. 

As  the  mad  acts  of  the  insane  infant  or  child  mark  a  de- 
generate state  of  nerve  element,  so  the  degenerate  creature 
itself  represents  a  degenerate  variety  or  morbid  kind  of  human 
being.  However  low  a  human  being  may  fall  or  be  brought, 
he  never  reverts  to.  the  type  of  any  animal ;  the  fallen  majesty 
of  mankind  being  manifest  even  in  the  worst  wrecks.  Cer- 
tainly there  may  sometimes  be  a  general  resemblance  to  one 
of  the  lower  animals,  but  the  resemblance  is  never  anything 
more  than  a  general  and  superficial  one ;  all  the  special  differ- 
ences in  mental  manifestations  are  still  more  or  less  apparent, 
just  as  all  the  special  differences  in  anatomical  structure  still 
remain.  The  idiot,  with  hairy  back,  may  go  on  his  knees  and 
"  bah  "  like  a  sheep,  as  did  one  of  which  Pinel  tells ;  but  as  he 
does  not  get  the  wool  and  conformation  of  the  sheep,  so  he 
does  not  get  its  psychical  characters :  he  is  not  adapted 
for  the  relations  of  the  sheep,  and,  if  placed  in  them,  would 
surely  perish,  and  he  does  exhibit  unconscious  traces  of  adapta- 
tion to  his  relations  as  a  human  being  which  the  best  developed 
animal  never  would.  So  also  with  regard  to  man's  next  of  kin, 
the  monkeys :  no  possible  arrest  of  development,  no  degradation 
of  human  nature  through  generations,  will  bring  him  to  the 
special  type  of  the  monkey  :  a  degenerate  kind  of  human  being 


ii.]  INSANITY  OF  EAELY  LIFE.  291 

may  be  produced,  but  it  is  a  morbid  kind,  wanting  the  instincts 
of  the  lower  animals,  and  the  unconscious  upward  aspirations  of 
their  nature,  as  well  as  the  reason  of  man  and  his  conscious 
aspirations.  It  is  a  very  rare  thing,  for  example,  to  meet  among 
idiots  with  that  instinctive  discrimination  of  poisonous  matters 
which  beasts  have ;  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  very  common  to 
meet  among  them  with  that  perverted  craving  for  improper  or 
injurious  food,  which  is  in  reality  the  unconscious  display  ol 
nature's  effort  to  extinguish  a  morbid  variety,  and  which,  but 
for  charitable  interference  and  fostering  care,  would  soon  accom- 
plish its  aim. 

Man  exists  in  an  intimate  correlation  with  nature  at  its 
present  stage  of  development — is,  as  it  were,  the  outgrowth  at 
this  stage  of  its  evolution,  and  therefore  flourishes  well  under 
the  existing  conditions :  the  monkey,  on  the  other  hand,  is  not 
in  harmony  with  the  complexity  of  surrounding  nature,  and  is 
rapidly  becoming  extinct,  the  stronger  species  surely  superseding 
it.  If  it  were  desired  to  bring  man  to  the  monkey  level  it  would 
be  necessary  that  the  latest  mighty  changes  in  nature  should  be 
undone,  and  that  condition  of  things  restored  which  prevailed 
ages  before  man  appeared,  and  of  which  the  monkey  was  the 
natural  outgrowth.  While,  then,  the  monkey  type,  and  every 
other  pure  animal  type,  represent  stages  in  the  upward  develop- 
ment of  nature,  the  theroid  degenerations  of  mankind  are  patho- 
logical specimens,  which,  not  being  serviceable  for  development, 
are  cast  off  by  the  stream  of  progress,  and  are  on  their  way  to 
destruction  for  re-issue  by  nature  under  better  form.  Let  them 
not  pass  by  in  their  decay,  however,  without  their  uses,  that  we, 
profiting  by  the  experiments  which  their  failures  afford,  may 
form  for  ourselves  true  generalizations  adapted  to  the  successful 
conduct  of  life,  and  therein  the  promotion  of  nature's  develop- 
ment. By  such  examples,  nature  teaches  how  best  to  promote 
the  progress  of  humanization. 

Do  not  the  foregoing  considerations  render  it  sufficiently 
intelligible  how  it  is  that  we  sometimes  witness  such  a  precocity 
of  seeming  vice  in  the  insane  infant  or  child?  Innate  in  its 
human  constitution  is  the  potentiality  of  a  certain  develop- 
ment, the  latent  power  of  an  actual  evolution  which  no  monkey 
ever  has ;  in  it  is  contained  as  by  involution,  or  implicitly 


292  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  [CHAP 

comprehended,  the  influence  of  all  mankind  that  has  gone  before. 
"When,  therefore,  such  a  "being  is  insane,  there  is  not  only  an 
individual  creature,  but  there  is  human  nature  in  perverse  action, 
in  retrograde  metamorphosis  :  there  are  actualized  in  a  morbid 
display  certain  potentialities  of  humanity,  and  accordingly  there 
are  presented  exhibitions  of  degenerate  Jiuman  action,  which,  so 
far  as  regards  the  individual  infant,  seem  to  mark  prematurity 
of  vice.  Humanity  is  contained  in  the  individual ;  and  in  these 
strange  morbid  displays  we  have  an  example  of  humanity  under- 
going retrograde  resolution.  In  the  sense  of  anything  in  nature 
being  self-determined  and  self-sufficing,  there  is  no  individuality: 
as  in  one  word  are  summed  up  ages  of  human  cultivation,  so 
in  one  mortal  are  summed  up  generations  of  human  existence. 
Both  in  his  knowledge  and  in  his  nature  each  one  is  the  in- 
heritor of  the  acquisitions  of  the  past.  Take  the  word  which 
represents  the  subtle  and,  as  it  were,  petrified  thought  of  a 
high  mental  culture,  and  trace  back  with  analytical  industry 
its  genesis, — resolve  it  into  its  elementary  production, — what  a 
succession  of  human  experiences  is  unfolded !  wrhat  a  gradual 
process  of  growth,  rising  in  speciality  and  complexity  up  to  that 
organic  evolution  which  the  word  now  marks,  is  displayed! 
Take,  in  like  manner,  the  individual  being,  and  trace  back 
through  the  long  records  of  ages  the  antecedent  steps  of  his 
genesis,  or  observe  rather  the  resolution  of  his  essential  human 
nature  as  it  is  exhibited  in  the  degenerate  acts  of  the  insane 
child — in  this  experiment  thus  obtruded  on  the  attention  by 
nature — and  there  will  then  be  no  cause  for  surprise  at  phe- 
nomena which  the  young  creature  could  never  have  individually 
acquired,  and  which,  so  far  as  its  conscious  life  is  concerned, 
appear  strangely  precocious  and  inexplicable.  There  is  the 
rapid  undoing  of  what  has  been  slowly  done  through  the  ages, 
the  irregular  morbid  manifestation  of  faculties  which  have  been 
tediously  acquired,  the  formless  ruin  of  carefully  fashioned  form. 
It  will  not  be  amiss  to  add  that  the  phenomena  of  the  insanity 
of  early  life,  examined  with  scrupulous  fidelity,  confirm  in  the 
fullest  and  most  exact  manner  the  general  physiological  and 
pathological  principles  which  throughout  this  work  it  has  been 
the  aim  to  establish,  enforce,  and  illustrate. 


II.]  INSANITY  OF  EARLY  LIFE.  293 


NOTE. 

While  tliis  sheet  was  in  the  press,  I  have  seen  an  interesting  case 
of  insanity  in  a  girl,  aet.  14,  who  is  lively,  pretty,  and  intelligent, 
She  suddenly  jumps  up  in  a  paroxysm  of  excitement,  exclaims, 
"  Mother,  I'm  dying!"  and  begins  praying  frantically.  The  paroxysm 
lasts  for  three  or  four  hours,  and  leaves  her  pale,  cold,  exhausted,  and- 
trembling  like  a  leaf.  A  brother  died  after  being  similarly  afflicted. 
The  mother  has  suffered  for  months  from  speechless  melancholia ;  and 
nearly  all  her  family  have  died  from  phthisis.  She  has  had  fourteen 
miscarriages  and  three  children,  this  being  the  only  one  left :  when 
carrying  her  she  had  a  terrible  fright  from  seeing  one  child  acciden- 
tally killed,  and  this  girl  was  born  suffering  from  constant  choreic  move- 
ments, which  lasted  for  six  months  after  birth.  Before  these  paroxysms 
of  excitement  came  on,  she  had  been  subject  to  periodical  attacks  of 
depression  with  much  weeping ;  and  all  her  life  has  suffered  more  or 
less  from  pain  in  the  head,  especially  in  the  left  temple. 


CHAPTER  III. 

VARIETIES  OF  INSANITT. 

are  certain  mild  forms  of  Insanity,  or  rather  certain 
-  eccentricities  of  thought,  feeling,  and  conduct,  that  scarcely 
reach  the  degree  of  positive  insanity,  which  not  unfrequently 
cause  great  difficulty  when  the  question  of  legal  or  moral  respon- 
sibility is  concerned.  Many  people  who  cannot  be  called  insane, 
notably  have  what  may  be  called  the  insane  temperament, — in 
other  words,  a  defective  or  unstable  condition  of  nerve  element, 
which  is  characterised  by  the  disposition  to  sudden,  singular, 
and  impulsive  caprices  of  thought,  feeling,  and  conduct.  This 
condition,  in  the  causation  of  which  hereditary  taint  is  commonly 
detectable,  may  be  described  as  the  Diathesis  spasmodica,  or  the 
Neurosis  spasmodica. 

1.  The,  Insane  Temperament,  or  Neurosis  spasmodica. — It  is 
characterised  by  singularities  or  eccentricities  of  thought,  feel- 
ing, and  action.  It  cannot  truly  be  said  of  any  one  so  consti- 
tuted that  he  is  mad,  but  he  is  certainly  strange,  or  "  queer,"  or, 
as  it  is  said,  "  not  quite  right."  What  he  does  he  must  often 
do  in  a  different  way  from  all  the  rest  of  the  world.  If  he 
thinks  about  anything,  he  is  apt  to  think  about  it  under  strange 
and  novel  relations,  which  would  not  have  occurred  to  an  ordi- 
nary person ;  his  feeling  of  an  event  is  unlike  that  which  other 
people  have  of  it.  He  is  sometimes  impressionable  to  subtle  and 
usually  unrecognised  influences;  and  now  and  then  he  does 
whimsical  and  apparently  quite  purposeless  acts.  There  is  in 
the  constitution  an  innate  tendency  to  act  independently  as  an 
element  in  the  social  system,  and  there  is  a  personal  gratification 
in  the  indulgence  of  such  disposition,  which  to  lookers-on  seems 
to  mark  great  self-feeling  and  vanity.  Such  a  one,  therefore,  is 
deemed,  by  the  automatic  beings  who  perform  their  duties  in  the 


CHAP,  in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY  295 

social  system  with  equable  regularity,  as  odd,  queer,  strange,  or 
not  quite  right. 

This  peculiarity  of  temperament,  which  undoubtedly  predis- 
poses to  insanity,  does  nevertheless  in  some  instances  border 
very  closely  upon  genius  ;  it  is  the  condition  of  the  talent  or  wit 
which  is  allied  to  madness,  only  divided  from  it  by  thin  par- 
titions. The  novel  mode  of  looking  at  things  may  be  an  actual 
advance  upon  the  accepted  system  of  thought ;  the  individual 
may  be  in  a  minority  of  one,  not  because  he  sees  less  than,  or 
not  so  well  as,  all  the  world,  but  because  he  happens  to  see 
deeper,  or  to  be  favoured  with  a  flash  of  intuitive  insight.  He 
may  differ  from  all  the  world,  not  because  he  is  wrong,  and  all 
the  world  is  right,  but  because  he  is  right,  and  all  the  world 
is  wrong.  Of  necessity  every  new  truth  is  at  first  in  a  mino- 
rity of  one ;  it  is  a  rebellion  against  the  existing  system  of 
belief;  accordingly  the  existing  system,  ever  thinking  itself  a 
finality,  strives  with  all  the  weight  of  its  established  organi- 
zation to  crush  it  out.  But  by  the  nature  of  things  that  must 
happen,  whether  the  novelty  be  a  truth  or  an  error.  After 
all,  it  is  only  through  the  appearance  of  rebels  in  the  social 
system  that  progress  is  effected ;  and  precisely  because  indivi- 
duality is  a  reproach,  and  'sneered  at  as  an  eccentricity,  is  it  well 
for  the  world,  as  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill  has  said,  that  individuality  or 
eccentricity  should  exist.*  It  may  be  advisable  to  set  this 
matter  forth  at  greater  length,  to  the  end  that  we  may,  if  possible, 
get  a  just  conception  of  the  real  relation  of  certain  sorts  of  talent 
to  insanity. 

The  genius  is  always  recognised  to  be  in  the  van  of  his  age ; 
in  that  wherein  he  is  in  advance,  he  necessarily  differs  from  his 
age,  and  is  often  enough  therefore  pronounced  mistaken,  unprac- 
tical or  mad :  in  that  wherein  he  agrees  with  his  age,  he  is  neces- 
sarily not  original ;  and  so  appears  the  truth  of  an  observation  of 
Goethe,  that  genius  is  in  connexion  with  its  century  only  by 
its  defects — that  in  which  there  is  not  genius.  Certainly  the 
originality  of  a  man  of  true  genius  will  grow  out  of  the  existing 
system,  may  be  traced  as  a  genetic  evolution  of  it ;  he  is  there- 
fore in  radical  connexion  with  his  century ;  •  but  the  more 
advanced  his  development,  the  more  he  will  outshoot  and 

*  Essay  on  Liberty. 


VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

differ  from  his  age.  Accordingly,  many  a  man  of  genius — who 
has  appeared  before  his  time,  or,  in  other  words,  before  the 
social  organism  has  reached  that  stage  of  evolution  repre- 
sented by  him — has  been  forgotten,  having  most  likely  been 
thought  more  or  less  mad  in  his  lifetime ;  and  the  person  who 
usually  gets  most  reputation,  and  whose  name  is  made  to  mark 
an  epoch  in  development,  is  he  who  systematizes  and  definitely 
sets  forth — that  is,  brings  into  illuminated  consciousness — the 
method  which  mankind  has  for  some  time  been  instinctively  or 
unconsciously  pursuing  :  a  Bacon  and  a  Comte,  being  in  reality 
not  much  in  advance  of  their  centuries,  but  having  eyes  to 
discern  the  tendency  of  development,  and  a  capacity  of  co- 
ordinating knowledge,  are  those  who  get  the  most  honour. 
But  even  these  men  are  not  honoured  so  much  by  their  own  age 
as  by  a  posterity  which  has  developed  up  to  their  level.  We 
never  know  how  high  the  mountain  is  until  we  get  some  distance 
from  it. 

An  inherent  disposition  of  nervous  constitution,  rendering  a 
man  dissatisfied  with  the  existing  state  of  things,  and  impelling 
him  to  novel  strivings,  is  really  an  essential  condition  of  origi- 
nality :  to  suffer  greatly,  and  to  react  with  corresponding  force, 
is  a  means  of  dragging  the  world  forward  at  the  cost  of  individual 
comfort.  Consider,  however,  what  an  amount  of  innate  power 
a  man  must  have  in  order  to  do  that,  without  himself  sinking 
under  the  huge  weight  of  opposition !  Many  earnest  and  in- 
tense reformers,  whose  vital  energies  have  been  absorbed  in  the 
promulgation  of  one  truth,  which  was  perhaps  an  important  one, 
have  notoriously  broken  down  in  face  of  the  crushing  force  of 
the  organized  opposition.  They  have  been  so  abandoned  to  their 
idea,  so  carried  away  by  it,  so  blind  to  the  force  of  the  circum- 
stances with  which  they  have  had  to  contend,  so  one-sided  and 
fanatical,  as  to  be  almost  as  inconsiderate  of  the  manifold  rela- 
tions of  their  surroundings  as  actual  madmen  are ;  and  accor- 
dingly they  have  often  been  called,  and  sometimes  perhaps  were, 
•  mad.  Certainly  their  failures  prove  that  they  had  not  sufficient 
insight,  patience,  and  capacity  for  the  task  which  they  had  under- 
taken ;  that  they  did  not  succeed,  was  because  they  did  not 
deserve  to  succeed.  Whatever  the  will,  there  was  not  in  their 
nature  the  capacity  to  establish  an  equilibrium  between  them 


IH.J  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  297 

and  external  conditions.  They  could  not  mould  circumstances 
agreeably  to  their  wish ;  they  could  not  accommodate  themselves 
to  circumstances  ;  they  were  inevitably,  therefore,  the  victims. 

It  is  undoubtedly  true,  that  where  hereditary  taint  exists  in  a 
family,  one  member  may  sometimes  exhibit  considerable  genius, 
while  another  is  insane  or  epileptic ;  but  the  fact  plainly  proves 
no  more  than  that  in  both  there  has  been  a  great  natural  sensi- 
bility of  nervous  constitution  which,  under  different  outward 
circumstances,  or  internal  conditions,  has  issued  differently  in 
the  two  cases.  Now  we  may  properly  look  at  the  functional 
manifestations  of  unstable  nerve  element  from  two  different 
aspects — first,  as  regards  the  reception  of  impressions;  and, 
secondly,  as  regards  the  reaction  outwards.  In  the  first  case, 
for  example,  we  may  have  one  who  is  equal  to  the  ordinary 
events  of  a  calm  life,  but  who,  possessing  no  reserve  power,  breaks 
down  under  the  stress  of  adverse  events.  And  yet  his  extreme 
nervous  susceptibility  may  render  him  capable  of  slighter  shades 
and  subtler  delicacies  of  feeling  and  thought  than  a  more  vigo- 
rously constituted  being  is.  The  defect,  then,  is  in  some  respects 
an  advantage,  although  a  rather  perilous  one,  for  it  may  approach 
the  edge  of  madness :  such  men  as  Edgar  Allan  Poe  and  De 
Quincey  illustrate  this  great  subtlety  of  sensibility,  amounting 
almost  to  disease,  and  so  far  give  some  colour  to  the  extravagant 
assertion  of  a  French  author  (Moreau  de  Tours),  that  a  morbid 
state  of  nervous  element  is  the  condition  of  genius.  It  should 
not  be  lost  sight  of,  however,  that  any  one  so  constituted  is  no- 
wise an  example  of  the  highest  genius ;  for  he  lacks,  by  reason 
of  his  great  sensibility,  the  power  of  calm,  steady,  and  complete 
mental  assimilation,  and  must  fall  short  of  the  highest  intellec- 
tual development.  Feeling  events  with  a  too  great  acuteness,  he 
is  incapacitated  from  the  calm  discrimination  of  the  unlike  in 
them,  and  the  steady  assimilation  of  the  like,  by  which  the 
integration  of  the  highest  mental  faculties  is  accomplished, — by 
which,  in  fact,  the  truly  creative  imagination  of  the  greatest  poet 
and  the  powerful  and  almost  intuitive  ratiocination  of  the  greatest 
philosopher  are  fashioned.  His  insight  may  be  marvellously  subtle 
in  certain  cases,  but  he  is  not  sound  and  comprehensive.  Although 
it  might  be  said,  then,  by  one  not  caring  to  be  exact,  that  the 
genius  of  an  acutely  sensitive  and  subjective  poet  denoted  a 


298  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

morbid  condition  of  nerve  element,  yet  no  one,  after  a  moment's 
calm  reflection,  would  venture  to  speak  of  the  genius  of  such  as 
Shakespeare,  Goethe,  and  Humboldt,  as  arising  out  of  a  morbid 
condition.*  The  impulse  which  instigates  these  men  to  their  supe- 
rior striving,  is  not  so  much  one  of  dissatisfaction  as  one  of  non- 
satisfaction — a  craving,  in  fact,  for  appropriation:  the  internal 
potentialities  display  their  endeavour  towards  realization  through 
the  concurrence  of  suitable  external  impressions  by  a  feel- 
ing of  want,  a  craving,  or  an  unsatisfied  instinct — not  other- 
wise than  as  the  lower  organic  elements  manifest  their  sense  of 
hunger,  or  as  the  sexual  instinct  reveals  its  want  at  puberty. 
The  difference  between  the  desires  which  are  the  motives  to 
action  of  the  highly  endowed,  well-balanced  nature  of  the  genius, 
and  the  desires  which  instigate  the  eccentric  and  violent  acts  of 
the  incipient  madman,  is  indeed  very  much  the  difference  be- 
tween the  natural  feeling  of  hunger  in  the  healthy  organism,  and 
the  perverted  appetite  for  garbage  and  dirt  which  the  hysterical 
person  occasionally  displays.  In  the  former  case  the  aspiration  is 
sound,  and  directed  towards  perfecting  a  harmony  between  the 
individual  and  nature  ;  in  the  latter,  it  is  unsound,  and  tends  to 
the  production  of  an  irreconcilable  discord. 

A  no  less  important  difference  between  the  highly-endowed 
nerve  element  of  the  genius  and  the  morbid  nerve  element 
of  the  hereditary  madman  will  be  apparent  when  we  look  to  the 
reactive,  instead  of  the  receptive,  side.  The  difference  is  not 
unlike  that  which  there  is  between  a  quiet  aim-working  voli- 
tional act  and  a  spasmodic  movement.  The  acts  of  the  genius 
may  be  novel,  transcending  the  automatic  routine  of  the  estab- 
lished system;  but,  however  original  and  startling  they  may 
appear  to  those  who  are,  as  it  were,  automatic  elements  in  the 
social  organization,  they  contain,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
well-formed  design :  there  are  in  them  an  intuitive  recognition 
of  and  an  intelligent  respondence  to  outward  relations ;  in  other 

*  "So  far  from  the  position  holding  true,  that  great  wit  (or  genius,  in  our 
modern  way  of  speaking)  has  a  necessary  alliance  with  insanity,  the  greatest  wits, 
on  the  contrary,  will  ever  be  found  to  be  the  sanest  writers.  It  is  impossible  for 
the  mind  to  conceive  of  a  mad  Shakespeare.  The  greatness  of  wit,  by  which  the 
poetic  talent  is  here  chiefly  to  be  understood,  manifests  itself  in  the  admirable 
balance  of  all  the  faculties.  Madness  is  the  disproportionate  straining  or  excess 
of  any  one  of  them." — Sanity  of  True  Genius,  by  Charles  Lamb. 


ill.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  299 

words,  they  are  aim-working  for  the  satisfaction  of  an  inherent 
impulse,  which  operates  none  the  less  wisely  because  there  may 
not  be  a  distinct  consciousness  of  its  nature  and  aim.  Inspiration 
is  the  exact  opposite  in  this  regard  of  habit  or  custom — that 
"  tyrant  custom  "  which  so  completely  enslaves  the  whole  manner 
of  thought  and  action  of  the  majority  of  men :  in  the  inspira- 
tion of  a  great  thought  or  deed  there  is  the  sudden  starting 
forth  into  consciousness  of  a  new  combination  of  elements 
unconsciously  present  in  the  mind  ;  these  having  been  steadily 
fashioned  and  matured  through  previous  experience.  The  acts 
of  the  person  who  has  the  evil  heritage  of  an  insane  temperament 
are,  on  the  other  hand,  purposeless,  irregular,  and  aim  at  the 
satisfaction  of  no  beneficial  desire ;  they  tend  to  increase  that 
discord  between  him  and  nature  of  which  the  purposeless  acts 
are  themselves  evidences,  and  they  must  ultimately  end  in  his 
destruction. 

I  have  thus  lingered  upon  the  relations  which  a  form  of  talent 
bears  to  insanity,  in  order  to  exhibit,  if  possible,  the  position  of 
each  in  the  social  organization.  In  both  cases  there  may  be  an 
uncommon  deviation  from  the  usual  course  of  things ;  but  in 
one  case  there  is  the  full  recognition  of  the  existing  organization 
as  the  basis  of  a  higher  development,  a  fusing  of  the  past 
through  a  new  mould  into  the  future ;  in  the  other,  there  is  a 
capricious  rebellion,  as  the  initiation  of  a  hopeless  discord.  A 
man  of  deep  insight  and  comprehensive  view  may  penetrate 
beneath  the  masks  of  things,  and  see  into  the  real  nature  of  many 
of  the  delusions  set  up  by  common  consent  to  be  worshipped, 
but  he  still  finds  a  real  truth  and  meaning  beneath  the  fleeting 
phenomena,  and  he  accepts  with  equanimity  the  present,  not  as 
the  end,  but  as  means  to  an  end,  perceiving  in  it  the  prophecy 
of  a  completer  future :  he  can  subordinate  his  self-hood  to  the 
system,  works  quietly  and  sincerely  in  his  sphere,  and  is  moved 
by  no  passion  springing  from  offended  self-feeling  to  set  the 
world  violently  right.  The  man  of  great  self-feeling,  on  the 
other  hand,  may  with  penetrating  insight  recognise  the  incom- 
pleteness, inadequacy,  or  vanity  of  many  existing  phenomena, 
but  he  is  too  apt  to  find  the  whole  ridiculous,  not  having 
sufficient  perception  to  discern  the  genuine  truth  which  lies  in 
all  these  apparent  shams ;  he  deems  himself  thoroughly  emanci- 


300  rARIETIIS  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

pated  when  he  is  actually  the-  unconscious  slave  of  an  extra- 
vagant self-feeling,  through  which  he  is  made  angry  with  the 
comedy  of  life,  or  passionately  earnest  to  set  the  world  right 
with  a  onesided  vehemence :  there  is  the  reaction  of  a  great  self- 
love  which  incapacitates  its  possessor,  or  rather  its  victim,  from 
subordinating  his  personality  to  the  laws  of  the  existing  organi- 
zation. Has  not  Goethe,  as  usual,  admirably  put  this  truth  in 
the  words,  "The  man  of  understanding  finds  almost  everything 
ridiculous ;  the  man  of  reason  hardly  anything  ? " 

Where  the  heritage  of  the  insane  temperament  exists,  it  will 
of  course  depend  much  on  the  internal  bodily  conditions  and  the 
external  circumstances  of  life  whether  the  mischief  shall  remain 
latent  or  issue  in  positive  insanity.  Under  favourable  circum- 
stances it  may  declare  itself  only  in  harmless  eccentricities  and 
singular  caprices ;  but  if  the  individual  is  placed  under  condi- 
tions of  great  excitement,  or  subjected  to  a  severe  mental  strain, 
the  inherent  propensity  is  apt  to  display  itself  in  some  impulsive 
act  of  violence.  The  great  internal  commotion  produced  in 
young  girls  at  the  time  of  puberty  is  well  known  to  be  an 
occasional  cause  of  strange  morbid  feelings  and  extraordinary 
acts  ;  and  this  is  especially  the  case  where  the  insane  tempera- 
ment exists.  In  such  case  also  irregularities  of  menstruation, 
always  apt  enough  to  disturb  the  mental  equilibrium,  may  give 
rise  to  an  outbreak  of  mania,  or  to  extreme  moral  perversion 
more  afflicting  to  the  patient's  friends  than  mania,  because  seem- 
ingly wilful.  The  stress  of  a  great  disappointment,  or  any  other 
of  the  recognised  causes  of  mental  disease,  will  meet  with  a 
powerful  co-operating  cause  in  the  constitutional  predisposition. 
On  this  matter,  however,  enough  has  already  been  said,  when 
treating  of  the  causation  of  insanity. 

It  remains  only  to  add  here — what  should  not  be  lost  sight 
of — that  a  morbid  hereditary  taint  frequently  impresses  its 
stamp  on  the  individual's  character  and  conformation  in  a  much 
more  decided  manner  than  by  eccentricities  of  conduct  which 
are  compatible  with  considerable  talent.  "  This  fatal  heritage," 
Esquirol  wrote,  "is  painted  upon  the  physiognomy,  on  the 
external  form,  on  the  ideas,  the  passions,  the  habits,  the  incli- 
nations of  those  who  are  the  victims  of  it."  In  these  extremer 
cases  the  physiognomy  has  not  the  regularity  and  harmony  of 


ra.]  TAULETIES  OF  INSANITY.  3Q1 

beauty ;  there  is,  perhaps,  an  irregular  conformation  of  the 
head;  a  vicious  implantation  of  the  ears,  or  a  deformity  of 
one  or  both  of  them,  is  not  uncommon ;  convulsions  may  occur 
in  early  life,  or  there  are  tics  and  spasmodic  movements  in 
after  life;  the  walk  is  uncertain,  vacillating  in  extreme  cases, 
and  there  is  sometimes  a  disproportion  between  the  limbs. 
Arrest  of  development  of  the  sexual  organs  is  not  very  uncom- 
mon ;  slight  diseases  readily  take  on  a  fatal  character,  so  little 
is  the  power  of  vital  resistance ;  and  the  mean  duration  of  life 
among  those  strongly  marked  by  this  fatal  heritage  is  less  than 
the  average.  There  are  corresponding  peculiarities  of  disposi- 
tion :  Morel  of  Eouen,  to  whom  we  are  most  indebted  for  the 
scientific  investigation  of  this  subject,  describes  these  victims 
as  purely  instinctive  beings  ;  they  display  instinctively  certain 
remarkable  talents,  as  for  music,  drawing,  calculation,  or  exhibit 
a  prodigious  memory  for  details;  but  they  are  incapable  of 
sustained  thought  and  work — they  cannot  bring  anything  to  a 
steady  perfection,  "  do  not  know  that  they  know,  do  not  think 
that  they  think ; "  and  under  any  great  strain  they  are  almost 
certain  to  break  down  into  desperate  insanity,  or  to  explode  in 
an  act  of  extravagant  violence.  As  the  result  of  his  elaborate 
researches,  Morel  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  "  in  the  inferior 
varieties  of  degenerate  beings  a  like  physical  type  is  to  be 
observed  amongst  all  the  individuals  that  compose  these  varie- 
ties, and  a  certain  conformity  in  their  intellectual  and  moral 
tendencies.  They  betray  their  origin  by  the  manifestation  of 
the  same  character,  the  same  manners,  the  same  temperament, 
the  same  instincts.  These  analogies  establish  amongst  degene- 
rate individuals  under  the  same  causes  the  bond  of  a  patholo- 
gical relationship.'  Forget  not  that  between  the  extreme  forms 
of  this  degeneracy  and  those  slight  eccentricities  compatible  with 
high  talent  there  are  to  be  met  with  cases  marking  every  shade 
of  the  long  gradation. 

Thus  much  concerning  those  peculiarities  of  temperament 
which  do  not  reach  the  degree  of  positive  insanity,  although 
they  strongly  predispose  to  it.  I  shall  now  go  on  to  treat  of  the 
different  varieties  of  actual  mental  disease.  On  a  general  survey 
of  the  symptoms  of  these  varieties  it  is  at  once  apparent  that 
they  fall  into  two  well-marked  groups  :  one  of  these  embracing 


302  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

all  those  cases  in  which,  the  mode  of  feeling  or  the  affective  life  is 
chiefly  or  solely  perverted — in  which  the  whole  habit  or  manner 
of  feeling,  the  mode  of  affection  of  the  individual  by  events,  is 
entirely  changed ;  the  other,  those  cases  in  which  ideational  or 
intellectual  derangement  predominates.  More  closely  scanning 
the  character  and  course  of  the  symptoms,  it  will  be  seen  that 
the  affective  disorder  is  the  fundamental  fact ;  that  in  the  great 
majority  of  cases  it  precedes  intellectual  disorder;  that  it  co- 
exists with  the  latter  during  its  course ;  and  that  it  frequently 
persists  for  a  time  after  this  has  disappeared.  Esquirol  rightly 
then  declared  "  moral  alienation  to  be  the  proper  characteristic 
of  mental  derangement."  "  There  are  madmen,"  he  says,  "  in 
whom  it  is  difficult  to  find  any  trace  of  hallucination,  but  there 
are  none  in  whom  the  passions  and  moral  affections  are  not 
perverted  and  destroyed.  I  have  in  this  particular  met  with  no 
exception."  To  insist  upon  the  existence  of  delusion  as  a 
criterion  of  insanity  is  to  ignore  some  of  the  gravest  and  most 
dangerous  forms  of  mental  disease. 

2.  Affective  Insanity. — The  feelings  mirror  the  real  nature  of 
the  individual;  it  is  from  their  depths  that  the  impulses  of 
action  spring ;  the  function  of  the  intellect  being  to  guide  and 
control.  Consequently  when  there  is  perversion  of  the  affective 
life,  there  will  be  morbid  feeling  and  morbid  action  ;  the  patient's 
whole  manner  of  feeling,  the  mode  of  his  affection  by  events,  is 
unnatural,  and  the  springs  of  his  action  are  disordered ;  and  the 
intellect  is  unable  to  check  or  control  the  morbid  manifestations, 
just  as,  when  there  is  disease  of  the  spinal  cord,  there  may  be 
convulsive  movement,  of  which  there  is  consciousness,  but  which 
the  will  cannot  restrain.  In  dealing  with  this  kind  of  derange- 
ment, it  will  be  most  convenient,  as  in  the  investigation  of  the 
insanity  of  early  life,  to  distinguish  two  varieties — impulsive  or 
instinctive  insanity,  and  moral  insanity  proper. 

(a)  Impulsive  Insanity. — Fixing  their  attention  too  much 
upon  the  impulsive  act  of  violence,  to  the  neglect  of  the  funda- 
mental perversion  of  the  feelings  which  really  exists,  many 
writers  appear  to  have  helped  to  increase  the  confusion  and 
uncertainty  which  unfortunately  prevail  with  regard  to  these 
obscure  varieties  of  mental  disorder.  Already  it  has  been 
pointed  out,  at  sufficient  length,  that  the  first  symptom  of  an 


IIL]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  303 

oncoming  insanity  commonly  is  an  affection  of  the  psychical 
tone, — in  other  words,  a  perversion  of  the  whole  manner  of 
feeling ;  and  what  we  have  here  to  fix  in  the  mind  is  that  the 
mode  of  affection  of  the  individual  by  events  is  entirely  changed : 
this  is  the  fundamental  fact,  from  which  flow  as  secondary  facts 
the  insane  impulses,  whether  erotic,  homicidal,  or  suicidal.  The 
result  of  the  abnormal  condition  of  nerve  element  is  to  alter 
the  mode  of  feeling  of  impressions  :  in  place  of  that  which  is 
for  the  individual  good  being  agreeable,  and  exciting  a  corre- 
spondent desire,  and  that  which  is  injurious  being  painful,  and. 
exciting  an  answering  desire  to  eschew  it,  the  evil  impression 
may  be  felt  and  cherished  as  a  good,  and  the  good  impression 
felt  and  eschewed  as  an  evil.  There  are  not  only  perverted 
appetites,  therefore,  but  there  are  perverted  feelings  and  desires, 
rendering  the  individual  a  complete  discord  in  the  social  organi- 
zation :  the  morbid  appetites  and  feelings  of  the  hysterical 
woman  and  the  singular  longings  of  pregnancy  are  mild  exam- 
ples of  a  perversion  of  the  manner  of  feeling  and  desire,  which 
may  reach  the  outrageous  form  of  morbid  appetite  exhibited  by 
the  pregnant  woman  who  killed  her  husband  and  pickled  his 
body  in  order  to  eat  it.  The  sexual  appetite  may  exhibit  strange 
and  painful  perversions,  which  again  of  necessity  involve  the 
destruction  of  all  those  finer  feelings  of  affection  and  propriety 
in  the  social  system  that  are  based  upon  it ;  for  it  is  impossible 
that  natural  and  healthy  love  should  co-exist  with  morbid  lust. 
The  morbid  perversion  of  feeling  may  be  general,  so  that  all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  abnormal  feelings  and  desires  are  exhi- 
bited, or  it  may  be  specially  displayed  in  some  particular  mode, 
so  that  one  persistent  morbid  feeling  or  desire  predominates. 
In  the  latter  case  we  have  such  instances  of  madness  as  those 
in  which  there  is  a  persistent  morbid  desire  to  be  hanged,  and 
the  victim  of  the  diseased  feeling  is  actually  impelled  to  a  homi- 
cidal act  to  satisfy  his  unnatural  craving;  or,  again,  such  insanity 
as  that  of  the  father  or  mother  who  kills  a  child  with  the  sincere 
purpose  of  sending  it  to  heaven.  The  act  of  violence,  whatever 
form  it  may  take,  is  but  the  symptom  of  a  deep  morbid  per- 
version of  the  nature  of  the  individual,  of  a  morbid  state  which 
may  at  any  moment  be  excited  into  a  convulsive  activity,  either 
by  a  powerful  impression  from  without  producing  some  great 


304  FARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

moral  shock,  or  by  some  cause  of  bodily  disturbance — intem- 
perance, sexual  exhaustion,  masturbation,  or  menstrual  disturb- 
ance. There  are  women,  sober  and  temperate  enough  at  other 
times,  who  are  afflicted  with  an  uncontrollable  propensity  for 
stimulants  at  the  menstrual  period ;  and  every  large  asylum 
furnishes  examples  of  exacerbation  of  insanity  or  epilepsy  coin- 
cident with  that  function.  In  fact,  where  there  is  a  condition 
of  unstable  equilibrium  of  nerve  element,  any  cause,  internal 
or  external,  exciting  a  certain  commotion,  will  upset  its  stability, 
just  as  happens  with  the  spinal  cord  under  similar  circum- 
stances. By  his  acts,  as  well  as  by  his  speech,  does  man  utter 
himself;  gesture-language  is  as  natural  a  mode  of  expression  as 
speech  ;  and  it  is  in  insanity  of  action  that  this  most  dangerous 
form  of  affective  insanity  is  expressed — most  dangerous  indeed, 
because  so  expressed. 

Amongst  numerous  examples  that  might  be  quoted  of  this 
form  of  insanity,  in  order  to  illustrate  different  uncontrollable 
impulses — suicidal,  homicidal,  erotic,  or  of  other  kind — it  shall 
suffice  here  to  adduce  three  cases,  all  of  which  came  under  my 
observation  and  treatment.  The  first  is  an  instance  of  irre- 
sistible suicidal  impulse : — 

A  married  lady,  aged  thirty-one,  who  had  only  one  child  a  few 
months  old,  was  for  months  afflicted  with  a  strong  and  per- 
sistent suicidal  impulse,  without  any  delusion  or  any  disorder 
of  the  intellect.  After  some  weeks  of  zealous  attention  and 
anxious  care  from  her  relatives,  who  were  all  most  unwilling 
to  send  her  from  among  them,  it  was  found  absolutely  necessary 
to  send  her  to  an  asylum,  so  frequent  were  her  suicidal  attempts, 
so  cunningly  devised,  and  so  determined.  On  admission  she  was 
very  wretched  because  of  her  frightful  impulse,  and  often  wept 
bitterly,  deploring  the  great  grief  and  trouble  which  she  caused 
to  her  friends.  She  was  quite  rational,  even  in  her  great  horror 
and  reprobation  of  the  morbid  propensity;  and  all  the  fault 
that  could  possibly  be  found  with  her  intellect  was,  that  it  was 
enlisted  in  the  service  of  the  morbid  impulse.  She  had  as 
complete  a  knowledge  of  the  character  of  her  insane  acts  as 
any  indifferent  bystander  could  have,  but  she  was  completely 
powerless  to  resist  them.  Nevertheless,  her  attempts  at  suicide 
were  unceasing.  At  times  she  would  stem  quite  cheerful,  so  as 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  305 

to  throw  her  attendants  off  their  guard,  and  then  would  make 
with  quick  and  sudden  energy  a  pre-contrived  attempt.  On  one 
occasion  she  secretly  tore  her  night-dress  into  strips  while  in 
bed,  though  an  attendant  was  close  hy,  and  was  detected  in  the 
attempt  to  strangle  herself  with  them.  For  some  time  she 
endeavoured  to  starve  herself  by  refusing  all  food,  and  it  was 
necessary  to  feed  her  with  the  stomach-pump.  The  anxiety 
which  she  caused  was  almost  intolerable,  but  no  one  could 
grieve  more  over  her  miserable  state  than  she  did  herself. 
Sometimes  she  would  become  cheerful  and  seem  quite  well 
for  a  day  or  two,  but  would  then  relapse  into  as  bad  a  state 
as  ever.  After  she  had  been  in  the  asylum  for  four  months, 
she  appeared  to  be  undergoing  a  slow  and  steady  improvement, 
and  it  was  generally  thought,  as  it  was  devoutly  hoped,  that  one 
had  seen  the  last  of  her  attempts  at  self-destruction.  "Watch- 
fulness was  somewhat  relaxed,  when  one  night  she  suddenly 
slipped  out  of  a  door  which  had  been  carelessly  left  unlocked, 
climbed  a  high  garden-wall  with  surprising  agility,  and  ran  off 
to  a  reservoir  of  water,  into  which  she  threw  herself  headlong. 
She  was  got  out  before  life  was  quite  extinct ;  and  after  this 
all  but  successful  attempt  she  never  made  another,  but  gradually 
regained  her  cheerfulness  and  her  love  of  life.  Her  family  was 
saturated  with  insanity.  In  face  of  such  an  example  of  un- 
controllable impulse,  what  a  cruel  mockery  it  is  to  measure  the 
lunatic's  responsibility  by  his  knowledge  of  right  and  wrong ! 

Cases  belonging  to  the  same  class  as  the  foregoing,  but  in 
which  the  impulse  was  homicidal,  have  been  recorded  by  many 
different  observers.  The  following  example  occurred  in  my 
practice: — An  old  lady,  aged  seventy-two,  who  had  several 
members  of  her  family  insane,  was  afflicted  with  recurring 
paroxysms  of  convulsive  excitement,  in  which  she  always  made 
desperate  attempts  to  strangle  her  daughter,  who  was  very  kind 
and  attentive  to  her,  and  of  whom  she  was  very  fond.  Usually 
she  sat  quiet,  depressed,  and  moaning  because  of  her  condition, 
and  was  apparently  so  feeble  as  scarcely  to  be  able  to  move. 
Suddenly  she  would  start  up  in  great  excitement,  and,  shrieking 
out  that  she  must  do  it,  make  a  rush  upon  her  daughter  that 
she  might  strangle  her.  During  the  paroxysm  she  was  so 
strong,  and  writhed  so  actively,  that  one  person  could  not  hold 
21 


306  FARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

her;  but  after  a  few  minutes  she  sank  down  quite  exhausted,  and; 
panting  for  breath,  would  exclaim,  "There,  there!  I  told  you; 
you  would  not  believe  how  bad  I  was."  No  one  could  detect  any 
delusion  in  her  mind ;  the  paroxysm  had  all  the  appearance  of 
a  mental  convulsion ;  and  had  she  unhappily  succeeded  in  her 
frantic  attempts,  it  would  certainly  have  been  impossible  to  say 
honestly  that  she  did  not  know  that  it  was  wrong  to  strangle 
her  daughter.  In  fact,  it  was  because  of  her  horrible  propensity 
to  so  wrong  an  act  that  she  was  so  wretched.  It  is  a  sufficiently 
striking  commentary  on.,  the  present  state  of  the  English  law  to 
add  that,  had  this  patient  succeeded  in  taking  her  daughter's 
life,  sentence  of  execution  must  have  been  passed,  and  might 
have  been  carried  into  effect,  notwithstanding  she  was  so  entirely 
insane  and  irresponsible. 

In  the  Report  of  the  Moruingside  Asylum  for  1850,  Dr.  Skae 
relates  a  somewhat  similar  case  of  a  female  who  was  tormented 
with  "  a  simple  abstract  desire  to  kill,  or  rather  (for  it  took  a 
specific  form)  to  strangle,"  without  any  disorder  of  the  intellec- 
tual powers,  and  who  "  deplored,  in  piteous  tenns,  the  horrible 
propensity  under  which  she  laboured." 

The  next  case  may  serve  to  illustrate  a  multitude  of  insane 
acts,  without  corresponding  intellectual  disorder :  there  was  not 
the  impulse  to  any  particular  insane  act,  but  there  were  various 
perverted  feelings  and  many  impulses  to  different  strange  and 
foolish  acts.  A  young  lady,  aged  twenty-nine,  of  good  appear- 
ance and  manners,  and  well  connected,  was,  after  long  patient 
trial  at  home,  sent  to  an  asylum.  From  the  age  of  twentyrtwo 
there  had  been  a  tendency  to  lowness  of  spirits  without  apparent 
cause.  Lately  she  had  become  worse,  and  was  now  described  as 
wilful,  impulsive,  passionate,  and  as  having  lost  all  affection  for 
her  parents,  though  formerly  most  affectionate  and  amiable. 
Her  habit  of  body  was  sluggish,  the  circulation  being  languid 
and  the  extremities  often  cold  and  livid ;  menstruation  was  very 
irregular.  She  complained  of  feeling  strange,  quite  unKke  herself, 
and  ill,  and  would  buy  all  kinds  of  queer  compounds  at  the 
chemist's,  and  take  them ;  sometimes  she  wrapped  a  wet  sheet 
round  her  body,  and  then  put  her  clothes  on  over  it.  She  enter- 
tained a  very  high  opinion  of  her  talents,  and  was  exceedingly 
vain,  seeming  to  think  herself  a  peculiar  person,  and  angrily 


!  iii.]v  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  307 

complaining  that  she  was  treated  most  shamefully  if  her  inclina- 
tions were  anywise  thwarted.  And  her  inclinations  were  peculiar, 
and  suddenly  manifested  :'she  would  all  of  a  sudden  scale  a  high 
garden  Avail  and  run  off  into  the  fields,  or  sit  down  by  the  road- 
side when  walking  out,  and  refuse  to  move  for  a  long  time,  or 
stand  still  in  the  middle  of  the  road,  or  jump  up  in  the  middle  of 
the  service  and  walk  out  of  church.  She  was  continually  writing 
letters  to  her  parents,  relatives,  and  people  whom  she  did  not 
know,  complaining  of  her  confinement,  sometimes  angrily,  at 
other  times  humorously.  Usually  the  letters  were  not  finished, 
.but  broken  off  abruptly,  sometimes  in  the'  middle  of  a  sentence, 
and  sent  for  posting :  one  was  addressed  to  "  Tout  le  Monde." 
The  letters  often  contained  very  clever  and  vigorous  remarks', 
but  the  sentences  were  rarely  connected,  each  one  being,  as  it 
were,  an  independent  shot ;  as  the  thought  came  automatically 
into  the  mind,  so  it  was  automatically  expressed.  Now  and  then 
she  would  refuse  to  take  any  food  for  a  day  or  two,  and  at  other 
times  would  eat  far  more  than  was  good  for  her.  She  always 
exhibited  extreme  religious  feeling,  was  fond  of  distributing  tracts 
as  she  went  along  the  road,  and  would  sometimes  read  to  the 
unfortunate  patients  who  were  more  severely  afflicted ;  notwith- 
standing which  benevolence,  however,  she  would,  if  she  had  not 
the  exact  seat  at  church  which  she  might  happen  to  desire,  burst 
into  tears  and  sob  with  passion,  or  rise  up  in  the  midst  of  the 
service  and  walk  quietly  out ;  at  other  times  she  would  not  move 
after  the  service  was  over,  notwithstanding  all  the  entreaties  and 
reproaches  of  those  who  attended  upon  her.  Adjured  beforehand 
to  behave  properly,  she  would  promise  to  try  to  do  so ;  remon- 
strated with  at  the  time  of  her  extravagances,  or  after  she  had 
indulged  in  them,  the  reply  usually  was  that  her  motives  were  not 
understood  ;  although  when  in  a  better  mood  she  confessed  that 
she  was  a  great  trouble,  acknowledged  the  attention  which  she 
received,  and  said  that  she  was  prompted  by  Satan ; '  sometimes 
she  wished  heartily  some  one  would  give  her  a  good  beating  so 
as  to  rouse  her  from  her  apathy.  If  any  reason  was  given  for  her 
impulsive  deeds  at  the  time,  it  usually  was  that  "  it  was  revealed 
to  her"  that  she  was  to  do  so ;  and  it  is  remarkable  that,  though 
usually  overcome  with  languor,  and  looking  as  if  scarcely  able, 
to  move,  she  would,  when  the  impulse  seized  her,  scale  a  high 


308  FARIETLES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP.. 

brick  wall  with  a  cat-like  agility,  though  she  seemed  to  have  no 
definite  notion  what  she  was  going  to  do  when  she  had  got  over, 
and  had  run  for  a  certain  distance.  In  all  her  conduct  she  exhi- 
bited an  odd  combination  of  reason  of  thought  and  of  dementia  of 
action ;  a  stranger  conversing  with  her  would  not  have  discovered 
that  she  ailed  anything  at  all :  there  were  good  natural  endow- 
ments and  general  correctness  of  thought  with  hopeless  dementia 
of  action ;  any  one  living  with  her  for  a  time  could  not  fail  to 
perceive  how  exceedingly  insane  she  really  was.  Although 
hereditary  taint  was  denied,  yet  it  ultimately  turned  out  that 
two  other  near  relatives  were  in  confinement,  and  incurably 
insane, — a  fact  which  might  have  been  predicted  with  some  con- 
fidence from  the  character  of  her  disease.  The  idea  which  arose 
in  the  mind  as  the  motive  impulse  of  her  singular  deeds  came 
not  by  any  regular  process  of  conscious  association ;  it  appeared 
as  the  result  of  cerebral  activity  in  the  recesses  of  the  unconscious 
mental  life ;  the  unconscious  nature,  as  so  often  happens  in  every 
one's  life,  surprised  and  overpowered  the  conscious  life.  The  idea 
thus  starting  automatically  into  sudden  activity  appeared  to  her 
verily  as  a  revelation  from  heaven  or  an  impulse  from  Satan ; 
and  the  action  which  it  dictated  was  scarcely  more  within  control 
than  the  sudden  spasm  of  chorea,  or  the  convulsion  of  epilepsy. 

The  foregoing  cases  may  be  accepted  as  typical  examples  of 
different  forms  of  impulsive  insanity.  In  each  of  them  there  was 
a  strong  hereditary  taint,  as  indeed  there  commonly  is  in  this 
convulsive  form  of  mental  disease ;  but  other  causes  may  give 
rise  to  a  singular  morbid  state  without  any  hereditary  taint  being 
positively  detectable.  Irregularities  of  menstruation  sometimes 
produce  severe  disorder  of  nerve  element,  giving  rise  in  one  per- 
son to  hysterical  convulsions  or  hysterical  mania,  in  another  to 
epilepsy,  and  in  another  to  violent  suicidal  or  homicidal  impulse. 
A  woman  who  was  in  the  deepest  despair  because  she  was 
afflicted  with  the  idea  that  she  must  murder  her  children,  and 
frequently  ran  actively  up  and  down  stairs  so  as  to  endeavour 
to  drive  away  the  idea  by  producing  exhaustion,  perfectly 
recovered  on  the  return  of  the  menses,  which  had  stopped. 
"  We  have,  amongst  others,"  says  Dagonet,  "  observed  a  patient 
who  was  seized  at  each  menstrual  period  with  violent  impulses. 
Under  the  influence  of  this  disposition  she  had  killed  her  three 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY. 

children  a  short  time  before  her  arrival  at  Stephansfeld."*  The 
degeneration  of  nerve  element  induced  by  habits  of  self-abuse, 
or  by  great  sexual  excesses,  sometimes  manifests  itself  in  the 
dangerous  form  of  impulsive  insanity.  Lallemand  relates  several 
striking  cases  in  which  patients  suffering  from  spermatorrhoea 
were  afflicted  with  painful  homicidal  and  suicidal  impulses. 

The  most  desperate  examples  of  homicidal  impulses  are  un- 
doubtedly met  with  in  connexion  with  epilepsy.  Sometimes  an 
attack  of  mania  notably  precedes  an  epileptic  fit  or  a  series  of 
epileptic  fits  ;  but  it  is  not  so  clearly  understood  that  the  mental 
derangement  so  occurring  may  have  the  form  of  profound  moral 
disturbance  with  homicidal  propensity,  but  without  manifest 
intellectual  derangement.  A  shoemaker  was  subject  to  severe 
epileptic  fits,  and  was  often  furious  for  a  while  immediately  after 
them ;  but  in  the  intervals  he  was  sensible,  amiable,  and  indus- 
trious. One  day,  when  in  the  gloomy  and  morose  frame  of  mind 
that  often  foretells  an  attack  of  epileptic  fits,  he  met  the  super- 
intendent of  the  asylum,  to  whom  he  was  much  attached,  and 
stabbed  him  to  the  heart.  He  had  not  had  a  fit  for  three  weeks, 
but  in  the  night  following  his  homicidal  deed  he  had  a  severe 
fit,  and  for  some  time  the  attacks  continued  to  be  frequent  and 
severe.  In  such  cases,  as  indeed  in  the  above  case,  there  are 
often  sudden  and  vivid  temporary  hallucinations.  Again,  the 
mental  disorder  which  sometimes  takes  the  place  of  an  epileptic 
attack,  representing  in  fact  a  masked  epilepsy,  may  appear  as 
simple  impulsive  insanity.  A  peasant,  aged  twenty-seven,  had 
suffered  from  epilepsy  since  he  was  eight  years  old ;  but  when 
he  was  twenty-five  the  character  of  his  disease  changed,  and 
instead  of  epileptic  attacks  he  was  seized  with  an  irresistible 
impulse  to  commit  murder.  He  felt  the  approach  of  his  attack 
sometimes  for  days  beforehand,  and  then  begged  to  be  restrained 
in  order  to  prevent  a  crime.  "  When  it  seizes  me,"  he  cried,  "  I 
must  kill  some  one,  were  it  only  a  child."  Before  the  attack  he 
complained  of  great  weariness ;  he  could  not  sleep,  felt  much 
depressed,  and  had  slight  convulsive  movements  of  his  limbs.t 

Because  the  general  perversion  of*the  whole  manner  of  feeling 

*  Traite£lementaireet  Pratique  des  Maladies  Mentales,  parH.  Dagonet,  1862. 
t  De  laFolie  consideree  dans  ses  Rapports  avec  les  Questions  Medico^udiciaires, 
par  C.  C.  H.  Marc. 


310  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

which  exists  in  all  these  cases  has  commonly  been  so  completely 
overlooked,  attention  being  fixed  exclusively  on  the  morbid 
act,  a  great  resistance  has  been  excited  in  the  public  mind 
to  the  admission  of  what  seemed  to  be  the  dangerous  theory  of 
instinctive  insanity.  The  word  "  instinctive,"  again,  is  not  well 
chosen ;  it  naturally  seems  absurd  to  imply  that  there  is  in  man 
an  instinct  to  commit  homicide  or  suicide.  Moreover,  it  is  quite 
evident  in  some  cases  of  impulsive  insanity  that  there  is  present 
in  the  mind  of  the  sufferer  the  idea  that  he  must  kill  some  one  : 
he  is  conscious  of  the  horrible  nature  of  the  idea,  struggles  to' 
escape  from  it,  and  is  miserable  with  the  fear  that  it  may  at  any 
moment  prove  too  strong  for  his  will,  and  hurry  him  into  a  deed 
which  he  dreads,  yet  cannot  help  dwelling  upon.  So  desperate 
sometimes  is  the  fear  of  yielding  to  the  morbid  impulse,  so 
intense  the  horror  of  doing  so,  and  so  extreme  the  mental  suffer- 
ing, that  a  mother,  afflicted  with  the  impulse  to  kill  her  child, 
has  killed  herself  to  prevent  a  worse  consummation.  It  happens, 
sometimes,  that  the  patient  succeeds  in  controlling  the  morbid 
idea  for  a  time,  calls  up  other  ideas  to  counteract  it,  warns  his 
probable  victim  to  get  out  of  the  way,  or  begs  earnestly  to  be 
himself  put  under  some  restraint ;  but  at  last,  perhaps  from  a 
further  deterioration  of  nervous  element  through  bodily  disturb- 
ance, the  morbid  idea  acquires  a  fatal  predominance ;  the  tension 
of  it  becomes  excessive ;  it  is  no  longer  an  idea  the  relations  of 
which  the  mind  can  contemplate,  but  a  violent  impulse  into 
which  the  mind  is  absorbed,  and  which  irresistibly  utters  itself 
in  action.  As  showing  how  artificial  are  the  divisions  commonly 
made  between  different  kinds  of  insanity,  and  as  illustrating  at 
the  same  time  the  state  of  the  affective  life  in  impulsive  insanity, 
it  may  not  be  amiss  to  remark  here,  that  while  we  should  de- 
scribe the  profoundly  depressed  patient  struggling  with  his  morbid 
idea  as  suffering  from  melancholia,  we  usually  designate  his 
disease  impulsive  insanity  when  he  is  hurried  into  action  by  the 
intensity  of  the  morbid  idea.  The  fact  that  a  person  so  afflicted 
can,  and  sometimes  does,  resist  the  diseased  idea  or  impulse, 
causes  many  to  think,  and  some  to  argue,  that  it  might  always 
be  successfully  resisted.  In  reality,  however,  it  is  a  simple 
question  of  the  degree  of  morbid  degeneration  of  nerve  element, 
whether  the  idea  shall  remain  in  consciousness  and  be  under 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  3]  1 

subjection,  or  become  uncontrollable  and  realize  its  energy  in 
action.  By  an  act  of  the  will  a  person  may  prevent  involuntary 
movement  of  his  limbs  when  the  soles  of  his  feet  are  tickled, 
but  the  strongest  will  could  not  prevent  spasmodic  movements 
of  the  limbs  when  the  excitability  of  the  spinal  cord  is  increased 
by  strychnia  or  disease.  It  is  impossible  that  true  conceptions 
of  mental  disease  can  be  acquired  until  men  cease  to  regard 
its  phenomena  entirely  from  a  psychological  point  of  view,  and 
consent  to  study  them  by  aid  of  the  established  principles  of 
physiology  and  pathology  :  the  despair  of  any  one  writing  upon 
mental  diseases  at  present  is,  that  he  cannot  convey  just  and 
adequate  ideas  of  them  by  any  care  or  labour  of  expression  so 
long  as  men  will  judge  them  by  the  revelations  of'  self-con- 
sciousness. Such  practice  is  not  one  whit  less  absurd  than  it 
would  be  to  form  conclusions  with  regard  to  convulsions  on 
the  basis  of  the  recognised  power  of  the  will  over  voluntary 
movements. 

Once  more  let  it  be  distinctly  affirmed,  that  the  morbid  con- 
dition of  nerve  element,  of  which  the  morbid  impulse  to  a 
violent  deed  is  a  marked  symptom,  is  not  less  certainly  evidenced 
by  a  general  perversion  of  feeling  or  of  the  affective  life.  It  is 
the  violence  and  suddenness  of  the  outward  reaction  in  impul- 
sive insanity  which  tends  to  mask  the  less  patent  symptoms  of 
affective  derangement. 

(6)  Moral  Insanity. — Here  the  moral  perversion  is  very  evident 
and  cannot  be  overlooked,  while  the  outward  reactions  of  the 
individual  are  less  convulsive  in  their  manifestations,  and  answer 
more  exactly  to  the  morbid  feelings  and  desires,  than  is  the  case 
in  impulsive  insanity.  Hence  it  is  so  difficult  to  induce  the 
public  to  entertain  the  idea  that  moral  insanity  is  anything 
more  than  wilful  and  witting  vice.  Much  as  the  assumption  of 
it  as  a  disease  has  been  reprobated,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
all  the  eminent  men  who  have  studied  insanity,  and  whose 
authority  we  habitually  accept,  are  entirely  agreed  as  to  the 
existence  of  a  form  of  mental  disorder  in  which,  without  any 
hallucination,  illusion,  or  delusion,  the  symptoms  are  exhibited 
in  a  perverted  state  of  those  mental  faculties  usually  called  the 
active  and  moral  powers,  or  included  under  feeling  and  volition 
— the  feelings,  affections,  propensities,  temper,  habits,  and  con- 


312  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

duct.  As,  however,  feeling  is  more  fundamental  than  cognition, 
the  intellectual  activity  cannot  be  entirely  unaffected,  though 
there  may  certainly  not  be  any  positive  delusion  :  the  whole 
manner  of  thinking  and  reasoning  is  tainted  by  the  morbid 
self-feeling  through  which  it  is  secondarily  affected.  The 
patient  may  judge  correctly  of  the  relations  of  external  objects 
and  events,  and  may  reason  very  acutely  with  regard  to 
them,  but  no  sooner  is  self  deeply  concerned,  his  real  nature 
touched  to  the  quick,  than  he  displays  in  his  reasoning  the 
vicious  influence  of  his  morbid  feelings  and  an  answering  per- 
version of  conduct :  he  cannot  truly  realize  his  relations,  and 
his  whole  manner  of  thought,  feeling,  and  conduct  in  regard  to 
himself  is  more  or  less  false.  In  a  great  many  cases,  where  this 
disordered  condition  of  mind  is  met  with,  it  will  be  found  to 
precede  an  outbreak  of  unquestioned  insanity — indeed,  we  might 
almost  say  that  in  more  or  less  marked  form  it  precedes  nearly 
every  attack  of  insanity ;  while  in  other  cases  it  will  be  found 
to  be  a  condition  persisting  for  a  time  after  all  the  intellectual 
derangement  of  an  attack  of  madness  has  disappeared.  The 
disappearance  of  hallucination  or  delusion  only  becomes  a  sure 
sign  of  convalescence  when  the  patients  return  at  the  same  time 
to  their  natural  healthy  feelings. 

When  moral  insanity  is  thought  to  exist  by  itself,  and  to  con- 
stitute the  disease,  as  it  certainly  may  do,  it  would  be  quite 
unjustifiable  to  assume  that  a  particular  vicious  act  or  crime, 
or  a  series  of  vicious  acts,  proved  its  existence ;  in  the  previous 
history  of  the  patient  there  will  be  evidence  of  a  sufficient  cause 
of  disease  having  been  followed  by  an  entire  change  of  manner, 
of  feeling,  and  acting :  the  vicious  act  or  crime  will  be  logically 
traceable  through  a  chain  of  symptoms  to  disease  as  cause,  as 
the  acts  of  the  sane  man  are  traced  to  or  deduced  from  his 
desires  and  motives.  "  There  is  often,"  says  Dr.  Prichard,  who 
first  called  attention  to  this  form  of  mental  derangement,  "a 
strong  hereditary  tendency  to  insanity ;  the  individual  has  pre- 
viously suffered  from  an  attack  of  madness  of  a  decided  cha- 
racter ;  there  has  been  some  great  moral  shock,  as  a  loss  of 
fortune ;  or  there  has  been  some  severe  physical  shock,  as  an 
attack  of  paralysis  or  epilepsy,  or  some  febrile  or  inflammatory 
disorder,  which  has  produced  a  perceptible  change  in  the  habi- 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  313 

tual  state  of  the  constitution.     In  all  these  cases  there  has  been 
an  alteration  in  the  temper  and  habits/'* 

When  compelled  to  give  an  opinion  upon  a  particular  case  of 
suspected  moral  insanity,  it  is  of  some  importance  to  bear  in 
mind  that  the  individual  is  a  social  element,  and  to  have  regard 
therefore  to  his  social  relations.  That  which  would  scarcely  be 
offensive  or  unnatural  in  a  person  belonging  to  the  lowest  strata 
of  society — and  certainly  nowise  inconsistent  with  his  relations 
there — would  be  most  offensive  and  unnatural  in  one  holding 
a  good  position  in  society,  and  entirely  inconsistent  with  his 
relations  in  it :  words  which,  used  in  the  latter  case,  would 
betoken  grave  mental  disorder,  may  be  familiar  terms  of  address 
amongst  the  lowest  classes.  Between  individuals,  as  elements 
in  the  social  organism,  there  is  in  this  regard  a  difference  not 
unlike  that  which  there  is  between  the  different  kinds  of  organic 
elements  in  the  bodily  organism  ;  it  is  important,  therefore,  that 
we  have  in  remembrance  the  individual's  social  relations  when 
dealing  with  moral  insanity,  as  we  regard  the  very  different 
relations  of  an  epithelial  cell  and  a  nerve  cell  when  dealing  with 
structures  so  far  apart  in  the  scale  of  life.  As  it  is  chiefly  in 
the  degeneration  of  the  social  sentiments  that  the  symptoms  of 
moral  insanity  declare  themselves,  it  is  plain  that  the  most 
typical  forms  of  the  disease  can  only  be  met  with  in  those  who 
have  had  some  social  cultivation. 

The  following  cases,  which  came  under  my  observation  and 
treatment,  may  stand  here  as  examples  of  a  mental  perversion 
which  it  would  seem  impossible  to  describe  as  other  than  moral 
insanity  : — 

Miss  A.  B.,  aged  thirty-eight,  was  the  only  child  of  indulgent 
parents,  in  high  social  position  and  wealthy.  Her  father 
was  harmlessly  insane,  nearly  imbecile,  and  it  was  necessary, 
after  every  means  of  controlling  her  at  home  had  been  tried 
in  vain,  to  send  her  to  an  asylum.  She  was  completely  given 
over  to  drinking  spirits  when  she  could  get  them,  and  would 
bribe  the  servants  or  any  one  else  she  could  bribe  to  buy  spirits 
for  her:  nor  was  she  capable  of  any  self-restraint  in  other 
regards,  making  no  scruple  to  indulge  whatever  passion  she 
found  means  of  indulging.  When  excited  she  was  extremely 
-  A  Treatise  on  Insanity  and  other  Disorders  of  the  Mind,  by  J.  C.  Prichard,  M.D. 


314  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY,  [CHAP. 

violent  in  conduct,  and  on  more  than  one  occasion  threatened 
her  father's  life  with  a  pistol  When  she  could  not  get  spirits, 
she  was  abusive,  mischievous,  quarrelsome,  full  of  complaints 
of  the  injustice  done  to  her,  and  truly  intolerable.  In  the 
asylum  she  was  the  cause  of  endless  disturbances,  continually 
making  complaints  against  the  attendants,  ingeniously  per- 
verting and  exaggerating  real  facts  so  as  to  make  of  them 
monstrous  iniquities,  doing  the  most  mischievous  things  for 
the  sole  purpose  of  giving  trouble  and  annoyance  to  the  ser- 
vants, and  delighted  with  her  success ;  sometimes  she  would 
refuse  to  take  her  food,  and  at  the  same  time  would  bribe  the 
attendant  to  secrete  it  for  her  so  that  she  might  take  it  without 
any  one  else  knowing.  Eemoved  from  the  asylum,  partly  in 
consequence  of  her  manifold  complaints,  she  was  tried  at  home 
unsuccessfully,  then  sent  back  to  the  asylum,  where  she  went 
on  just  as  before,  removed  again  after  a  time,  sent  to  a  different 
asylum,  taken  away  from  that,  and  sent  again  to  another; 
indeed,  her  wanderings  were  many,  and  she  was  the  hopeless 
patient  of  every  doctor  who  had  the  misfortune  to  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  her. 

Miss  C.  D.,  set.  forty-five,  was  a  cousin  of  the  above  patient, 
and  also  of  good  social  position.  Her  appearance  was  anything 
but  attractive  ;  she  was  withered,  sallow,  blear-eyed,  with  an 
eminently  unsteady  and  untrustworthy  eye.  So  improper  and 
immoral  was  her  conduct,  that  she  was  obliged  to  live  apart  from 
her  family  in  lodgings ;  for  she  seemed  incapable,  in  certain 
regards,  of  any  control  over  her  propensities.  Whenever  she  was 
able,  she  left  her  lodgings  to  spend  days  together  at  a  brothel 
with  a  common  fellow,  whom  she  supplied  with  money,  frequently 
pawning  her  clothes  for  that  purpose.  When  at  home,  she 
generally  lay  in  bed  for  most  of  the  day.  ISfo  appeal  was  of  any 
avail  to  induce  her  to  alter  her  mode  of  life.  She  was  prone 
to  burn  little  articles,  impulsively  throwing  them  into  the  fire, 
saying  that  she  could  not  help  it,  and  then  cutting  and  pricking 
her  own  flesh  by  way  of  penance.  Now  and  then  she  would  all 
of  a  sudden  pirouette  on  one  leg,  and  throw  her  arms  about ;  and, 
with  like  sudden  impulsiveness,  would  not  unfrequently  break  a 
pane  of  glass.  When  reasoned  or  remonstrated  with  about  her 
foolish  tricks,  she  professed  to  feel  them  to  be  very  absurd, 


in.]  FARIETIES  OF  INSANITY. 

expressed  great  regret,  and  talked  with  exceeding  plausibility 
about  them,  as  though  she  were  not  responsible  for  them,  but 
were  an  angel  in  difficulties,  which  she  could  not  overcome.  It 
was  of  no  use  whatever  speaking  earnestly  with  her,  for  she 
admitted  her  folly  to  a  greater  extent  than  accusation  painted  it, 
and  spoke  of  it  with  the  resigned  air  of  an  innocent  victim.  Her 
habits  were  unwomanly,  and  often  offensive.  The  more  sensible 
of  the  other  patients  amongst  whom  she  was,  used  to  get  very 
angry  with  her,  because  they  thought  that  she  could  behave 

better  if  she  would.     "  One  can  bear  with  Miss ,  because, 

poor  girl,  she  does  not  know  what  she  does,  and  cannot  help  it ; 

but  Miss knows  quite  well  what  she  is  about,  and  I  am 

quite  sure  she  can  help  it  if  she  likes,"  was  the  style  of  complaint 
made  against  her.  And  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  she  did 
know  perfectly  well  what  she  was  about,  but  her  unconscious 
vicious  nature,  ever  prompting,  surprised  and  overpowered  con- 
scious reflection,  which  was  only  occasional 

Miss set.,  forty,  was   respectably  connected,  and- was 

herself  possessed  of  sufficient  property  to  enable  her  to'  live 
independently.  She  had  a  sister  confined  in  an  asylum.  For 
a  long  time  she  had  been  utterly  given  over  to  intemperance, 
and  lost  to  all  sense  of  propriety  ;  she  was  abandoned  to  sexual 
indulgence,  and  cared  not  with  whom,  and  more  than  once  had 
been  sent  to  prison  for  her  irregularities.  Her  natural  feelings 
and  affections  were  entirely  perverted,  and  she  wrote  angrily  and 
abusively  to  her  brother,  who  had  at  last  been  compelled  to 
take  steps  to  have  her  taken  care  of,  telling  him  that  she  wras 
under  the  protection  of  an  officer,  and  that  she  would  let  him 
know  that  she  was  a  gentleman's  prostitute.  Of  truth  she 
seemed  quite  unable  to  form  a  conception,  while  lies,  mischief, 
and  vice  were  congenial  to  her  nature.  When  prevented  from 
indulging  her  vicious  propensities,  she  would  lie  all  day  on  the 
sofa,  asserting  that  she  was  too  ill  to  do  anything,  even  to  take 
a  walk,  and  insisting  that  she  ought  to  have  every  sort  of 
delicacy.  In  her  moods  of  excitement,  she  would  sometimes 
talk  of  people  plotting  against  her,  and  of  herself  being  guided 
by  the  ruling  planets ;  but  there  was  no  positive  intellectual 
disorder  detectable,  though  there  was  a  painful  state  of  extreme 
and  hopeless  moral  alienation. 


316  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

It  is  quite  certain  that  these  three  women,  so  lost  to  all  sense 
of  the  obligations  of  their  position,  could  not  restrain  their  im- 
moral extravagances  and  perverse  acts  for  any  length  of  time  ; 
punishment  had  no  effect,  except  in  so  far  as  it  was  a  restraint 
for  the  time  being.  All  of  them  knew  quite  well  the  difference 
between  right  and  wrong,  but  no  motive  could  be  excited  in 
their  minds  to  induce  them  to  pursue  the  right  and  eschew  the 
wrong ;  their  conduct  revealed  the  tyranny  of  an  unhappy  orga- 
nization ;  the  world's  wrong  was  their  right.  The  ruling  planets 
by  which  one  of  them,  in  her  angry  moods,  professed  to  be  guided 
was  not,  therefore,  an  absolute  fiction,  for  therein  was  expressed 
the  fate  made  for  her  by  a  vicious  organization.  For  a  like 
reason  such  patients  feel  no  shame,  regret,  nor  remorse  for  their 
conduct,  however  flagrantly  unbecoming  and  immoral  it  may 
have  been,  never  think  that  they  are  to  blame,  and  consider  them- 
selves ill-treated  by  their  relatives  when  they  are  interfered 
with.  They  are  examples  illustrating  the  retrograde  metamor- 
phosis of  mind.  The  moral  feeling  has  been  slowly  acquired  in 
the  course  of  human  cultivation  throiigh  generations  as  the  highest 
effort  of  mental  evolution ;  and  in  the  course  of  family  degene- 
ration, we  find  its  loss  mark  a  stage  in  the  downward  course. 
The  victims  of  such  vice  or  defect  of  nature  cannot  be  fitted  for 
social  intercourse.  Friends  may  remonstrate,  entreat,  and  blame, 
and  punishment  may  be  allowed  to  take  its  due  course,  but  in 
the  end  both  friends  and  all  who  know  them  recognise  the  hope- 
lessness of  improvement,  and  acknowledge  that  they  must  be 
sent  to  an  asylum. 

It  is  where  hereditary  taint  exists  that  we  meet  with  the  most 
striking  examples  of  this  kind  of  insanity,  and  those  which  often 
cause  such  great  difficulties  in  medico-legal  investigations.  There 
is  the  strongest  aversion  on  the  part  of  the  public  to  admit  that  an 
extreme  hereditary  taint  may  be  a  not  less  certain  cause  of  defect 
or  disease  of  mind  than  an  actual  injury  of  the  head;  and  yet  it  is 
the  fact.  The  hereditary  predisposition  to  insanity  signifies  some 
unknown  defect  of  nervous  element,  an  innate  disposition  to 
irregularities  in  the  social  relations ;  the  acquired  infirmity  of  the 
parent  has  become  the  natural  infirmity  of  the  offspring,  as  the 
acquired  habit  of  the  parent  animal  observably  becomes  sometimes 
the  instinct  of  the  offspring.  Hence  conies  the  impulsive  or  in- 


in.]  FARIET1ES  OF  INSANITY.  317 

stinctive  character  of  the  phenomena  of  hereditary  insanity,  the 
actions  being  frequently  sudden,  unaccountable,  and  seemingly 
quite  motiveless.  Appeal  calmly  to  his  consciousness,  and  the  in- 
dividual may  sometimes  reason  with  great  intelligence,  and  seem 
nowise  deranged ;  leave  him  to  his  own  devices,  or  place  him 
un^er  conditions  of  excitement,  and  his  unconscious  life  appears 
to  get  the  mastery,  and  to  drive  him  to  immoral,  extravagant,  and 
dangerous  acts.  He  perpetrates  some  singular  act  of  eccentricity 
because  all  the  world  will  censure  it,  or  even  commits  a  murder 
for  the  sole  purpose  of  being  hanged.  It  is  worse  than  useless 
for  a  sound  mind  to  attempt  to  fathom  the  mad  motives  which 
spring  up  in  a  madman's  mind  ;  it  is  most  unjust  to  judge  his 
actions  by  a  standard  based  upon  the  results  of  an  examination 
of  sane  self-consciousness  :  to  do  so  is  simply  to  attempt  to  make 
coherency  and  incoherency,  order  and  disorder,  equivalent.  Only 
long  experience  and  careful  study  of  actual  cases  of  mental  dis- 
ease will  suffice  to  give  any  sort  of  adequate  notion  of  what  a 
madman  really  is. 

When  there  is  no  hereditary  taint  detectable  in  a  case  of 
so-called  moral  insanity,  it  is  necessary  to  traverse  the  whole 
physical  and  mental  life  of  the  patient,  by  a  careful  research  into 
his  previous  history,  and  scrupulous  examination  of  his  present 
state.     It  will  be  of  great  moment  to  ascertain  whether  there  has- 
been  any  previous  attack  of  insanity  ;  for  it  sometimes  happens 
that  after  one  or  two  attacks  of  melancholia  with  suicidal  ten- 
dency, from  which  recovery  has  taken  place,  the  patient  gets  an 
attack  of  genuine  moral  insanity,  which  may  finally  pass  into 
intellectual  disorder  and  dementia.     The  extremest  example  of 
moral  insanity  which  I  have  seen  was  in  an  old  man  aged  sixty- 
nine,  who  had  been  in  one  asylum  or  another  for  the  last  fifteen 
years  of  his  life.    He  had  great  intellectual  power,  could  compose 
well,  write  tolerable  poetry  with  much  fluency,  and  was  an  excel- 
lent keeper  of  accounts.    There  was  no  delusion  of  any  kind,  and 
yet  he  was  the  most  hopeless  and  trying  of  mortals  to  deal  with. 
Morally  he  was  utterly  depraved ;  he  would  steal  and  hide  what- 
ever he  could,  and  several  times  made  his  escape  from  the  asylum 
with  marvellous   ingenuity.      He  then  pawned  what  he  had 
stolen,  begged,  and  lied  with  such  plausibility  that  he  deceived 
many  people,  until  he  finally  got  into  the  hands  of  the  police, 


318  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

or  was  discovered,  in  a  most  wretched  state,  in  the  company  of  the 
lowest  mortals  in  the  lowest  part  of  the  town.  In  the  earlier  part 
of  his  insane  career,  which  began  when  he  was  forty-eight  years 
old,  he  was  several  times  in  prison  for  stealing.  In  the  asylum 
he  was  a  most  troublesome  patient.  He  could  make  excellent 
suggestions,  and  write  out  admirable  rules  for  its  management,  a/id 
was  very  acute  in  detecting  any  negligence  or  abuse  on  the  part 
of  the  attendants,  when  they  displeased  him ;  but  he  was  always 
on  the  watch  himself  to  evade  the  regulations  of  the  house,  and 
when  detected,  he  was  most  abusive,  foul,  and  blasphemous  in 
his  language.  He  was  something  of  an  artist,  and  delighted  to 
draw  abominable  pictures  of  naked  men  and  women,  and  to 
exhibit  them  to  those  patients  who  were  addicted  to  self-abuse. 
He  could  not  be  trusted  with  female  patients,  for  he  would 
attempt  to  take  indecent  liberties  with  the  most  demented 
creature.  In  short,  he  had  no  moral  sense  whatever,  while  all 
the  fault  that  could  be  found  with  his  very  acute  intellect  was, 
that  it  was  entirely  engaged  in  the  service  of  his  depravity.  It 
may,  no  doubt,  be  thought  that  he  was  a  desperately  wicked 
criminal,  and  that  his  proper  place  was  the  prison.  But  the 
prison  had  been  tried  many  times,  and  tried  unsuccessfully. 
And  there  was  another  reason  why  prison-discipline  could  not 
rightly  be  permitted  to  supersede  asylum  treatment.  At  long 
intervals,  sometimes  of  two  r  ears,  this  patient  became  profoundly 
melancholic  for  two  or  three  months,  refused  to  take  food,  and 
was  as  plainly  insane  as  any  patient  in  the  asylum.  It  was  in  an 
attack  of  this  sort  also  that  his  disease  first  commenced. 

In  other  cases  of  moral  alienation  there  will  be  found  to  have 
been  more  or  less  congenital  moral  defect,  with  maniacal  exacer- 
bations of  positive  moral  insanity  occurring  perhaps  at  puberty, 
perhaps  at  the  menstrual  periods,  perhaps  after  severe  disappoint- 
ment. Again,  moral  insanity  may  occur  after  acute  fevers,  after 
injury  to  the  head,  after  some  form  of  brain  disease ;  in  some 
instances  it  is  the  first  stage  of  mental  degeneration  consequent 
on  self-abuse ;  now  and  then  it  occurs  in  consequence  of  a  severe 
moral  shock  as  the  forerunner  of  more  marked  insanity ;  and 
it  not  unfrequently  precedes  general  paralysis.  But  the  disease 
with  which  it  is  most  commonly  found  in  conjunction  is  epi- 
lepsy :  a  so-called  masked  epilepsy  sometimes  appears  in  attacks 


HI,]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  3J9 

of  positive  moral  insanity  of  variable  duration  and  of  periodical 
recurrence,  the  attacks  perhaps  coming  on  regularly  for  months, 
before  the  characteristic  convulsions  make  their  appearance  ;  or 
extreme  moral  perversion  may  immediately  precede  epilepsy; 
or  again,  the  epileptic  convulsions  may  cease,  and  attacks  of 
moral  insanity,  with  more  or  less  maniacal  excitement,  take 
their  place.  There  can  be  no  question  in  the  minds  of  those 
who  have  studied  mental  diseases,  that  certain  unaccountable 
criminals  belong  to  the  class  of  epileptics.* 

Thus  much  concerning  this  second  variety  of  affective  insanity 
— Moral  Insanity  Proper.     Whatever  name  it  may  ultimately  be 
thought  best  to  give  it,  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  necessity 
of  recognising  in  practice  the  existence  of  such  a  form  of  disease. 
If,  indeed,  the  evidence  drawn  from  its  own  nature  and  causation 
were  insufficient,  the  fact  that  it  is  often  the  immediate  fore- 
runner of  the  severest  mental  disease  might  suffice  to  teach  its 
true  pathological  interpretation.     "When,  therefore,  a  person  in 
good  social  position,  possessed  of  the  feelings  that  belong  to  a 
certain  social  state,  and  hitherto  without  reproach  in  all  the 
relations  of  life,  does,  after  a  cause  known  by  experience  to  be 
capable  of  producing  every  kind  of  insanity,  suddenly  undergo  a 
great  change  of  character,  lose  all  good  feelings,  and  from  being 
truthful,  temperate,  and  considerate,  become  a  shameless  liar, 
shamelessly  vicious,  and  brutally  wicked,  then  it  will  certainly 
be  not  an  act  of  charity,  but  an  act  of  justice,  to  suspect  the 
effects  of  disease.     At  any  rate  it  behoves  us  not  to"  be  misled  in 
our  judgment  by  the  manifest  existence  in  such  a  patient  of  a 
full  knowledge  of  the  nature  of  his  acts— of  a  consciousness,  in 
fact,  of  right  and  wrong ;  but  to  remember  that  disease  may 
weaken  or  abolish  the  power  of  volition,  without  affecting  con- 
sciousness.    Fortified  by  this  just  principle,  we   shall  be  far 
better  prepared  for  a  right  interpretation  of  the  facts  of  a  par- 
ticular case  than  whea  biassed  or  blinded  by  the  opposite  most 
false  principle. 

3.  Idcational  Insanity.— Under  this  general  name  may  be 
included  those  different  varieties  of  insanity  usually  described  as 

*  Morel,  D'une  Forme  de  Delire  suite  d'une  Surexcitation  nerveuse  se  rat- 
tachant  a  nue  Variete  non  encore  decrit  d'Epilepsie.  1860.  J.  Falret,  De  1'Etat 
Mentale  d'fipileptiques. 


320  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

Mania  or  Melancholia  :  the  unsoundness  affects  ideation,  and  is 
exhibited  in  delusions  and  intellectual  alienation.  Cases  of 
ideational  insanity  are  easily  recognised  to  be  of  two  principal 
kinds,  according  to  the  character  of  the  accompanying  feeling : 
in  one  kind  there  is  great  oppression  of  the  self-feeling  with 
corresponding  gloomy  morbid  idea ;  in  the  other  there  is  excite- 
ment or  exaltation  of  the  self-feeling,  with  corresponding  lively 
expression  of  it  in  the  character  of  the  thoughts  or  in  the  conduct 
of  the  patient..  The  former  cases  belong  to  Melancholia;  the 
latter  to  Mania,  acute  or  chronic.  Again,  on  looking  at  cases 
of  ideational  insanity,  it  is  easily  seen  that  there  is  general  in- 
tellectual derangement  in  some,  while  in  others  the  alienation 
seems  to  be  confined  to  a  small  number  of  fixed  ideas ;  so  that 
we  might  make  a  division  of  ideational  insanity  into  (a)  general 
and  (6)  partial.  If  we  did  so,  then  partial  ideational  insanity 
would  really  correspond  with  what  Esquirol  called  Monomania, 
though  not  with  what  is  now  usually  called  so ;  for  under  that 
name  was  included  by  him  not  only  partial  mania  accompanied  by 
an  exciting  or  gay  passion,  but  also  partial  intellectual  insanity 
accompanied  by  a  sad  and  oppressive  passion  ;  the  latter  he  sub- 
distinguished  as  Lypemania,  but  it  is  now  commonly  separated 
as  Melancholia.  "Whether  this  is  wisely  done  may  admit  of  con- 
siderable doubt :  there  are  met  with  in  practice  as  many  varieties 
of  emotional  perversion  as  there  are  varieties  of  morbid  ideas, 
different  patients  exhibiting  every  degree  and  kind  of  passion, 
from  the  rapture  of  the  exalted  monomaniac  to  the  deep  gloom 
of  the  profound  melancholic  ;  and  accordingly  it  is  not  always 
possible,  under  the  present  nomenclature,  to  determine  satis- 
factorily whether  a  particular  case  belongs  to  monomania  or  to 
melancholia.  Certain  cases  of  melancholia  do  in  point  of  fact 
furnish  the  best  examples  of  monomania.  Another  reason 
against  the  present  classification  is  that  there  are  cases  of  acute 
melancholia  in  which  the  excitement  and  the  derangement  of 
ideas  and  conduct  are  so  great  that  they  run  insensibly  into 
acute  mania,  and  might  just  as  properly  be  called  so :  they  are 
examples  of  acute  ideational  insanity,  but  whether  they  are 
classified  as  maniacal  or  melancholic  is  very  much  a  matter  of 
caprice  or  accident. 

A  third  objection  to  an  adherence  to  the  present  artificial 


ni.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  321 

classification  is,  that  it  has  unquestionably  fettered  observation, 
and  hindered  the  faithful  study  of  the  natural  history  of  insanity. 
The  different  forms  of  affective  insanity  have  not  been  properly 
recognised  and  exactly  studied  because  they  did  not  fall  under 
the  time-honoured  divisions ;  and  the  real  manner  of  commence- 
men*  of  intellectual  insanity  in  a  disturbance  of  the  affective  life 
has  frequently  been  overlooked.  It  is  true  that  Guislain  and 
Griesinger  have  held  that  a  melancholic  stage  of  depression 
almost  invariably  precedes  an  outbreak  of  mania ;  and  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  the  sequence  is  traceable  in  very  many  cases. 
But  it  cannot  be  admitted,  as  some  would  have  it,  in  every  case. 
What  has  been  overlooked  even  by  those  who  have  not  over- 
looked the  preliminary  affective  derangement  is,  that  there  is  not 
only  (a)  a  melancholic  perversion  of  the  affective  life  preceding 
intellectual  derangement,  but  that  there  is  also  (6)  a  maniacal 
perversion  of  the  affective  life,  so  to  speak, — an  affective  insanity 
which  is  of  an  excited  or  expansive  kind,  in  which  the  indi- 
vidual's self-feeling  is  greatly  exaggerated  or  morbidly  exalted. 
It  is  a  maniacal  disorder  of  the  feelings,  sentiments,  and  acts, 
without  delirium,  and  it  is  expressed  chiefly,  as  the  corresponding 
affective  melancholia  is,  not  in  delusion  but  in  the  conduct  of 
the  patient.  Though  frequently  following  a  brief  stage  of  melan- 
cholic depression,  this  condition  is  sometimes  primary.  It  is 
displayed  in  a  great  change  of  moral  character  :  the  parsimonious 
becomes  extravagant,  the  modest  man  presumptuous  and  ex- 
acting, the  affectionate  parent  thoughtless  and  indifferent ;  there 
is  great  liveliness  of  manner,  or  a  restless  activity  as  of  one 
half-intoxicated;  an  overweening  self-esteem  is  very  evident, 
and  an  extravagant  expenditure  of  money,  an  excessive  sexual 
indulgence,  or  other  intemperance,  is  common.  The  tone  of  the 
mental  nature  is  profoundly  deranged ;  the  foundations  of  the 
mental  being  are  shattered  ;  and  the  patient  is  often  practically 
less  fitted  for  his  relations  in  life  than  at  a  subsequent  stage  of 
the  disease,  when  matters  have  gone  further  and  the  morbid 
action  is  systematized  in  some  definite  delusions.  In  some 
cases  there  may  be  less  exaltation  manifest,  while  the  perversion 
of  the  affective  life  is  more  marked, — in  other  words,  the  moral 
alienation  more  extreme ;  this  condition  being  perhaps  best  wit- 
nessed in  that  profound  moral  derangement  which  sometimes 
22 


322  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

precedes  a  series  of  epileptic  fits,  or  takes  the  place  of  an 
epileptic  fit. 

So  soon  as  we  have  recognised  the  existence  of  a  deep  perver- 
sion of  the  feelings,  sentiments,  and  acts,  having  a  brisk  maniacal 
rather  than  a  gloomy  melancholic  character,  and  preceding  in 
some  cases  the  outbreak  of  intellectual  derangement,  we  fail 
not  to  perceive  how  closely  it  is  allied  to,  or  rather  how  it  is 
fundamentally  identical  with,  those  stages  of  insane  degeneration 
already  described  as  varieties  of  affective  insanity.  In  fact,  the 
Mania  sine  delirio  of  Pinel,  the  Monomanie  raisonnante  ou  sans 
delire  of  Esquirol,  the  Monomanie  affective  of  the  same  author, 
and  the  Moral  Insanity  of  Prichard, — all  are  varying  phases  of 
this  affective  disorder,  which,  continued,  usually  ends  in  positive 
intellectual  disorder  or  dementia.  Though  an  earlier  stage  of 
mental  degeneration  than  intellectual  insanity,  it  is  really,  from 
a  social  point  of  view,  a  more  dangerous  form  of  mental  dis- 
ease ;  for  its  natural  tendency  is  to  express  itself,  not  in  words, 
as  ideational  insanity  does,  but  in  actions.  It  is  a  condition 
in  which  dangerous  hallucinations  and  dangerous  impulses  are 
both  apt  to  arise  suddenly  and  to  hurry  the  patient  into  some 
desperate  act.  Once  more  then  let  it  be  repeated,  that  man  is 
not  only  a  consciously  active  being,  but  also  an  unconsciously 
active  being  ;  and  that,  although  the  unconscious  mental  func- 
tion is,  in  the  state  of  perfect  bodily  health,  subordinated  to  the 
directing  power  of  the  will,  yet,  when  disease  has  disturbed 
the  harmony  of  parts,  the  unconscious  activity  displays  its 
effects  independently  of  the  will  or  even  of  consciousness. 

For  the  foregoing  reasons  I  hold  that  it  would  conduce  to 
greater  precision  of  knowledge,  and  would  be  followed  by  some 
valuable  practical  results,  if  the  present  artificial  classification, 
which  is  not  really  in  conformity  with  nature,  and  which  assumes 
an  entirely  fictitious  exactness,  were  considerably  modified.  If 
a  broad  division  were  made  of  insanity  into  two  classes,  namely, 
insanity  without  positive  delusion  and  insanity  with  delusion, 
in  other  words,  into  affective  insanity  and  ideational  insanity; 
and  if  the  subdivisions  of  these  into  varieties  were  subsequently 
made — would  not  the  classification,  general  as  it  may  appear, 
and  provisional  as  it  should  be  deemed,  be  really  more  scien- 
tific than  one  which,  by  postulating  an  exactness  that  does  not 


ill.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  323 

exist,  is  a  positive  hindrance  to  an  advance  in  knowledge  ?  One 
desirable  result  of  great  practical  consequence  could  not  fail  to 
follow  ;  that  is,  the  adequate  recognition  of  those  serious  forms 
of  mental  degeneration  in  which  there  are  no  delusions.  I  have 
ventured  accordingly  in  a  former  publication  to  put  forward  the 
following  classification  :  * — 

I.  AFFECTIVE  OR  PATHETIC  IL  IDEATIONAL  INSANITY. 

INSANITY. 

1.  MANIACAL    PERVERSION    OF   THE      1.  GENERAL. 

AFFECTIVE  LIFE.      MANIA  SINE  a.  Mania.  )  Acute  and 

DELIRIO.  b.  Melancholia,  j   Chronic. 

2.  MELANCHOLIC  DEPRESSION  WITH-      2.  PARTIAL. 

OUT  DELUSION.     SIMPLE  MELAN-  a.  Monomania. 

CHOLIA.  6.  Melancholia. 

3.  MORAL  ALIENATION  PROPER.    Ap-      3.  DEMENTIA,  primary  and  secondary. 

proaching  this,  but  not  reaching      4.  GENERAL  PARALYSIS. 

the  degree  of  positive  insanity,  is      5.  IDIOCY,  including  IMBECILITY. 

the  INSANE  TEMPERAMENT. 

The  cases  of  so-called  impulsive  insanity,  which  for  practical 
purposes  has  just  been  illustrated  separately  as  a  variety  of  affec- 
tive insanity,  will  really  fall  under  one  or  other  of  its  above- 
mentioned  varieties  :  in  all  of  them  dangerous  impulses  are  apt 
to  arise,  and  to  express  themselves  in  convulsive  action ;  and, 
where  a  desperate  impulse  displays  itself  without  any  apparent 
affective  disorder,  it  is  only  that  the  outward  violence  masks  the 
internal  derangement. 

Whatever  classification  be  adopted  in  the  present  state  of  our 
knowledge  of  so  obscure  a  subject,  it  must  be  provisional.  What 
meanwhile  it  is  most  important  to  bear  in  mind  is,  that  the 
different  forms  of  insanity  are  not  actual  pathological  entities, 
but  different  degrees  or  kinds  of  the  degeneration  of  the  mental 
organization, — in  other  words,  of  deviation  from  healthy  mental 
life ;  they  are  consequently  sometimes  found  intermixed,  replac- 
ing one  another,  or  succeeding  one  another,  in  the  same  person. 
There  is  in  the  human  mind  a  sufficiently  strong  propensity  not 
only  to  make  divisions  in  knowledge  where  there  are  none  in 
nature,  and  then  to  impose  the  divisions  upon  nature,  making 
the  reality  thus  conformable  to  the  idea,  but  to  go  further,  and 
to  convert  the  generalizations  made  from  observation  into  posi- 
tive entities,  permitting  for  the  future  these  artificial  creations 
*  Article  "  Insanity,"  in  Reynolds's  System  of  Medicine,  vol.  ii. 


324  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY. 

to  tyrannise  over  the  understanding.  A  typical  example  of 
madness  might  be  described  as  one  in  which  the  disorder,  com- 
mencing in  emotional  disturbance  and  eccentricities  of  action — 
in  derangement  of  the  affective  life,  passes  thence  into  melan- 
cholia or  mania,  and  finally,  by  a  further  declension,  into  demen- 
tia. This  is  the  natural  course  also  of  mental  degeneration  when 
proceeding  unchecked  through  generations.  Although  then  we 
may  have  the  different  stages  passed  through  within  the  brief 
space  of  a  single  life,  this  is  not  a  sufficient  reason  why  they 
should  not  be  distinguished  and  separately  treated  of ;  for  not 
only  may  a  person  suffer  from  one  kind  of  mental  derangement 
without  ever  falling  victim  to  another,  but  the  different  varie- 
ties run  their  particular  course,  call  for  their  special  prognosis, 
and  require  their  special  treatment. 

(a)  Partial  Ideational  Insanity. — This  division  will  corre- 
spond with  that  originally  described  as  monomania  by  Esquirol, 
and  will  include  not  only  delusion  accompanied  by  an  exalted 
passion,  but  also  delusion  accompanied  by  a  sad  and  oppressive 
passion — monomania  proper  and  ordinary  melancholia.  In  the 
former  an  exalted  self-feeling  gets  embodied  in  a  fixed  delusion, 
or  in  a  group  of  delusions,  which  fails  not  to  testify  an  overween- 
ing self-esteem ;  it  is  clothed  in  a  corresponding  delusion  of  power 
or  grandeur,  and  the  personality  of  the  patient,  who  may  fancy 
himself  king,  prophet,  or  divine,  is  transformed  accordingly :  in 
the  latter,  the  feeling  of  oppression  of  self  becomes  condensed 
into  a  painful  delusion  of  being  overpowered  by  some  external 
agency,  demonic  or  human,  or  of  salvation  lost  through  individual 
sins.  In  both  cases  we  have  a  partial  ideational  insanity — in 
the  one  case  with  overweening  esteem  of  self,  in  the  other 
with  oppression  of  self — with  fixed  delusion  or  delusions  upon 
one  subject  or  a  few  subjects,  apart  from  which  the  patient 
reasons  tolerably  correctly.  Pathologically,  there  is  a  systema- 
tization  of  the  morbid  action  in  the  supreme  cerebral  centres,  the 
establishment  of  a  definite  type  of  morbid  nutrition  in  them. 

A  morbid  idea,  or  a  delusion,  engendered  in  the  mind  and  per- 
sisting there,  may  be  compared  with  a  morbid  growth  in  some 
organ  of  the  body,  or  with  a  chronic  morbid  action,  which  cannot 
be  brought  under  the  correcting  influence  of  the  surrounding 
healthy  tissues,  and  restored  to  a  sound  type.  Similarly,  the 


in.1  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  325 

morbid  idea  does  not,  as  in  health,  call  up  other  ideas  which 
may  supersede  it,  its  energy  being  transferred,  and  itself  becom- 
ing latent  or  statical  under  the  unconscious  assimilating  influence 
of  the  cerebral  centres,  so  that  the  present  is  brought  into  accord 
with  the  past,  or  with  that  mental  organization  which  by  an 
abstraction  we  call  the  ego  ;  but  the  morbid  idea  is  not  assimil- 
able, cannot  be  made  of  the  same  kind  with  the  sound  elements 
of  the  mental  organization,  is  in  entire  contradiction  with  the 
past,  and  remains  unaffected  by  reflection,  because  it  cannot 
really  enter  into  any  reflection:  like  a  cancer,  or  any  other 
strange  morbid  growth,  it  continues  its  own  morbid  life,  and 
the  whole  conscious  life  may  at  any  moment  be  brought  under 
its  dominating  influence  :  it  represents  a  partial  automatic 
morbid  action,  like  a  spasm  beyond  the  control  of  volition, 
though,  like  a  spasm,  not  always  beyond  the  knowledge  of  con- 
sciousness. A  young  man,  for  example,  who  had  previously  had 
a  few  epileptic  fits,  became  extremely  melancholic,  being  pos- 
sessed with  the  morbid  idea  that  he  was  to  be  murdered  in  his 
father's  house ;  he  made  frequent  attempts  to  escape  from  it, 
and  the  precautions  taken  to  prevent  his  escape  only  served  to 
strengthen  his  delusion.*  Reasoning  with  him  was  of  no  use,  for 
the  notion  was  not  explicable  on  any  reasonable  principles  :  if  a 
looker-on  could  truly  enter  into  the  steps  of  the  mental  processes 
by  which  such  a  delusion  was  generated,  he  would  be  as  mad  as 
the  patient ;  and  if  the  patient  could  appreciate  the  force  of  the 
reasoning  by  which  the  looker-on  proves  the  notion  to  be  mad- 
ness, why  then  he  would  not  be  mad  at  all  It  is  the  patient's 
disease  that  he  cannot :  when  the  constitution  of  his  nervous 
element  is  such  that  an  absurd  delusion  of  that  kind  could  per- 
sist and  not  be  corrected  by  the  stored-up  results  of  past  mental 
acquisitions — whether  such  as  might  be  consciously  recalled,  or 
such  as  existed  as  statical  faculties  interworking  in  unconscious 
assimilating  action — then  it  is  the  sure  testimony  of  fundamental 
damage  to  the  mechanism  of  mental  action,  the  consequences  of 
which  are  a  disorder  and  incoherence  of  action  inconsistent  with, 
and  therefore  unintelligible  to,  the  experience  of  the  sound  mind. 
The  very  fact  that  such  a  notion  is  not  self-annihilating  is  evi- 
dence of  a  fundamental  disorder,  which,  if  it  should  not  actually ' 

*  Cazauvieh,  De  la  Monomanie  Homicide.     1836. 


326  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

prepare  us  to  look  for,  at  any  rate  should  make  us  receive  -with- 
out surprise,  any  further  irrational  exhibition  by  the  patient. 
Hence  also  it  is  that  if  we  admit  the  false  premisses  of  the  mad- 
man's delusion,  he  cannot  follow  us  in  rational  deductions  from 
them ;  he  does  not  generally,  as  Locke  supposed,  reason  correctly 
from  false  premisses ;  he  is  not  logically  mad ;  but  his  whole 
manner  of  action  is  more  or  less  incoherent,  and  betrays  the 
disease  of  which  the  delusion  is  a  symptom.  In  vain  do  men 
pretend  that  the  mind  of  the  monomaniac  is  sound,  apart  from 
his  delusion :  not  only  is  the  diseased  idea  a  part  of  the  mind, 
and  the  mind,  therefore,  no  more  sound  than  the  body  is  sound 
when  a  man  has  a  serious  disease  of  some  vital  organ,  but  the 
exquisitely  delicate  and  complex  mechanism  of  mental  action  is 
radically  deranged :  the  morbid  idea  could  not  else  have  been 
engendered  and  persist.  The  mind  is  not  unsound  upon  one 
point,  but  an  unsound  mind  expresses  itself  in  a  particular  mor- 
bid action.  Moreover,  when  the  delusion  is  once  produced,  there 
is  no  power  of  drawing  a  sanitary  cordon  round  it,  and  thus,  by 
putting  it  in  quarantine  as  it  were,  preserving  all  other  mental 
processes  from  infection :  on  the  contrary,  the  morbid  centre 
reacts  injuriously  on  the  neighbouring  centres,  and  there  is  no 
guarantee  that  at  any  moment  the  most  desperate  consequences 
may  not  ensue.  That  was  precisely  what  did  happen  in  the  case 
which  we  have  taken  for  illustration :  the  young  man,  whose 
father  was  a  butcher,  becoming  calmer  after  a  time,  and  being 
thought  trustworthy,  was  permitted  at  his  own  request  to  be 
present  at  the  slaughter  of  an  ox ;  but,  when  all  was  finished,  he 
did  not  wish  to  return  home.  His  friends,  however,  pressed  him, 
and  two  of  them,  taking  him  by  the  arm  in  a  friendly  manner, 
accompanied  him  towards  his  home ;  but,  just  as  he  approached 
the  door  of  his  house,  he  suddenly  drew  out  a  butcher's  knife 
which  he  had  concealed,  and  stabbed  to  the  heart  one  of  them, 
fleeing  immediately  to  the  forest,  where  he  passed  the  night. 
Next  morning  he  went  to  the  house  of  a  relative  who  lived 
some  distance  off,  and  said  that  he  had  run  away  from  home,  as 
they  wished  to  kill  him  there.  In  this  case  the  homicidal  act 
had  a  discoverable  relation  to  the  delusion,  although  a  very 
insane  one ;  but  in  some  cases  of  monomaniacal  delusion  there 
is  no  relation  whatever  discoverable  between  the  delusion  and 


lit]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY. 

the  act  of  violence,  while  in  others  the  patient  may  subsequently 
make  known  a  most  absurd  and  incoherent  connexion  which  the 
most  sagacious  looker-on  would  never  have  suspected,  and  cannot 
understand. 

The  signification  of  a  persistent  delusion  in  the  mind,  in 
regard  to  those  intimate  organic  processes  on  which  rests  the 
integrity  of  mental  action,  is  threefold :  first,  the  fact  of  the 
delusion  betokens  a  fundamental  disorder  in  the  organic  pro- 
cesses as  the  condition  of  its  existence,  the  extent  of  such  dis- 
order being  nowise  necessarily  limited  to  its  production;  secondly, 
the  existence  of  a  centre  of  morbid  action  in  the  midst  of  nu- 
merous most  sensitive  nervous  centres,  which  are  connected  in 
the  most  delicate,  intimate,  and  complex  manner,  will  tend  to 
produce  by  sympathy,  infection,  or  induction,  or  reflex  action, 
call  it  as  Ave  may,  some  derangement  in  them;  and,  thirdly, 
the  automatic  activity  of  the  morbid  centre,  reaching  a  certain 
intensity,  may  become  an  uncontrollable  impulse,  and,  irresistibly 
uttering  itself,  hurry  the  patient  into  some  insane  action  insti- 
gated by  it.  In  other  words,  psychologically  speaking,  the  exist- 
ence of  a  delusion  indicates  fundamental  disorder  of  mental 
action — radical  insanity ;  secondly,  the  delusion  reacts  inju- 
riously upon  other  mental  phenomena,  interfering  secondarily 
with  correct  ratiocination,  or  due  co-ordination  of  function,  and 
predisposing  to  convulsive  mental  phenomena ;  and,  thirdly, 
while  it  cannot  be  subordinated  to  reflection,  the  individual  may 
at  any  moment  be  subordinated  to  it,  and  act  under  its  insti- 
gation. The  mind  then  which  suffers  from  positive  ideational 
insanity,  however  seemingly  partial,  is,  being  unsound,  not  to  be 
relied  upon,  nor  to  be  held  responsible ;  disease  is  going  on  in 
it,  and  it  does  not  depend  upon  the  individual  wishes  or  will 
what  course  it  shall  take  or  what  height  it  shall  reach,  any  more 
than  the  health  of  a  man  bodily  sick  depends  upon  the  desire 
which  he  may  have  to  rise,  take  up  his  bed,  and  walk 

Certainly,  in  some  cases  of  so-called  monomania  or  partial 
ideational  insanity,  there  does  appear  to  be  but  little  evidence  of 
insanity  apart  from  the  particular  morbid  ideas ;  but  such  cases 
are  generally  met  with  in  an  asylum,  where  the  patient  is  removed 
from  those  particular  relations  in  which  the  moral  perversion 
might  be  expected  to  display  itself,  and  where  the  quiet  regularity 


328  rARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

of  life  and  the  absence  of  all  exciting  impressions  favour  the 
latency  of  the  affective  insanity.  Allow  those  patients  who  are 
so  calm  and  serviceable  in  the  asylum,  to  return  to  active  life, 
and  to  be  subjected  to  the  strain  of  trying  circumstances,  or  the 
stress  of  adverse  events,  and  they  soon  suffer  from  attacks  of 
general  excitement,  if  they  do  not  perpetrate  acte  of  dangerous 
violence ;  even  in  the  asylum  they  have  now  and  then  their 
bad  times,  in  which  they  are  morose,  uncertain,  and  excitable. 
Nothing  is  more  surprising  to  the  inexperienced  person  than 
the  extreme  passionate  excitement  and  utter  irrationality,  when 
they  do  break  out,  of  these  monomaniacs,  whom  he  has  hitherto 
regarded  as  quite  sensible  apart  from  their  delusion,  and  as 
harmlessly  interesting  perhaps  by  reason  of  it.  They  will  mostly 
tolerate  with  great  composure  the  annoyances  of  their  fellow- 
patients,  because  they  look  down  upon  them  with  pity  as  mad  ; 
but  once  let  them  be  offended  and  excited,  it  is  rendered  very 
plain  how  unstable  and  dangerous  is  their  state  of  mind. 

It  is  necessary  to  guard  against  the  mistake  of  supposing  the 
delusion  to  be  the  cause  of  the  passion,  whether  painful  or  gay, 
that  may  accompany  partial  ideational  insanity.  In  cases  of 
simple  melancholia  there  may  be  no  delusion :  the  patient's 
feeling  of  external  objects  and  events  may  be  perverted  so  that 
he  is  conscious  of  being  strangely  and  unnaturally  changed; 
impressions  which  should  be  agreeable  or  indifferent  are  painful ; 
he  feels  himself  strangely  isolated,  and  cannot  take  any  interest 
in  his  affairs ;  he  is  profoundly  miserable  and  shuns  society, 
perhaps  lying  in  bed  all  day.  All  this  while  he  may  be  quite 
conscious  of  his  unnatural  state,  and  may  strive  to  conceal  it 
from  his  friends.  Suddenly,  it  may  be,  an  idea  springs  up  in 
his  mind  that  he  is  lost  for  ever,  or  that  he  must  commit  suicide, 
or  that  he  has  committed  murder  and  is  about  to  be  hanged ; 

o        y 

the  vast  and  formless  feeling  of  profound  misery  has  taken  form 
as  a  concrete  idea — in  other  words,  has  become  condensed  into 
a  definite  delusion,  this  now  being  the  expression  of  it.  The 
delusion  is  not  the  cause  of  the  feeling  of  misery,  but  is  engen- 
dered of  it, — is  precipitated,  as  it  were,  in  a  mind  saturated  with 
the  feeling  of  inexpressible  woe ;  and  it  takes  different  forms 
according  to  the  degree  of  the  patient's  culture,  and  the  social, 
political,  and  religious  ideas  prevailing  at  the  particular  epoch.  In 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  329 

some  cases  it  is  striking  how  disproportionate  the  delusion  is  to 
the  extreme  mental  anguish,  the  patient  assigning  the  most  ridi- 
culously inadequate  cause  for  his  gloom  :  one  man  tinder  my  care, 
whose  suffering  was  very  great,  said  that  it  was  because  he  had 
drunk  a  glass  of  beer  which  he  ought  not  to  have  done,  and  another 
man  was,  as  he  thought,  lost  for  ever  because  he  had  muttered  a 
curse  when  he  ought  to  have  uttered  a  prayer.  With  him  who 
believes  that  he  is  doomed  to  infinite  and  eternal  misery,  it  is  not 
the  delusion  but  the  affective  disorder  that  is  the  fundamental  fact ; 
there  cannot  be  an  adequate  or  definite  idea  in  the  finite  mind 
of  the  infinite  or  the  eternal ;  and  the  insane  delusion  of  eternal 
damnation  is  but  the  vague  and  futile  attempt  to  express  an 
unutterable  real  suffering.  In  all  these  cases  of  melancholia  the 
deep  sense  of  individual  restriction  which  exists,  the  wretched 
feeling  of  the  oppression  of  self,  is  interpreted  as  due  to  some 
external  agency;  and  as  the  existence  of  any  passion  notably 
intensifies  an  idea  that  is  congruous  with  it,  the  delusion  ulti- 
mately attains  great  vividness.  So  with  regard  to  other  passions, 
whether  excited  by  some  external  event  or  some  internal  com- 
motion ;  when  vehement  and  long  continued,  they  are  apt  to  end 
in  some  positive  delusion.  The  vain  person  who  cherishes  an 
ambitious  passion  may  after  a  time  be  so  entirely  possessed  by 
it  that  he  is  unable  to  see  things  as  they  really  are,  and  his  over- 
weening self-esteem  terminates  perhaps  in  the  delusion  that  he 
is  emperor,  king,  or  even  divine.  The  essential  nature  of  the 
delusion  will  depend  upon  the  special  nature  of  the  passion  in 
which  the  individual's  self-feeling  is  engaged,  but  the  particular 
form  which  it  assumes  will  depend  greatly  upon  the  education 
and  upon  the  circumstances  of  life  in  which  he  has  been  placed. 
Thus  the  vain  and  ambitious  person  who  has  had  a  religious 
training  will  assume  a  character  in  accordance  with  his  senti- 
ments, and  will  deem  himself  a  prophet  favoured  of  heaven,  or 
even  Jesus  Christ ;  the  politician  will  be  a  prime  minister,  or 
some  great  political  character;  the  man  of  science  will  have 
solved  the  problem  of  perpetual  motion,  or  will  be  the  victim  of 
complicated  and  ingenious  persecution  by  means  of  electricity. 
When  witchcraft  was  generally  believed  in,  the  insane  frequently 
fancied  themselves  to  be  tormented  by  witches ;  but  since  the 
police  have  been  established,  they  often  believe  the  police  to  be 


330  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP 

in  pursuit  of  them.  At  the  time  when  Napoleon  was  setting  up 
and  pulling  down  kings,  many  people  were  admitted  into  French 
asylums  who  believed  themselves  to  be  kings  and  emperors ;  and 
Esquirol  thought  that  he  could  have  written  the  history  of  the 
French  Eevolution  from  the  character  of  the  insanity  which 
accompanied  its  different  phases.  The  insanity  of  any  time  will 
be  a  more  or  less  broken  reflection  of  the  character  of  the  events 
that  happen  in  it. 

The  following  briefly  reported  cases  may  serve  as  illustrations 
of  partial  ideational  insanity,  and  of  the  foregoing  observa- 
tions : — 

C.  K.,  set.  36,  married,  had  always  been  of  an  extremely  reli- 
gious character  and  of  exemplary  behaviour.  After  he  had 
been  married  for  about  a  year,  his  present  illness  began  with 
general  depression  of  feeling  and  with  the  involuntary  appearance 
in  his  mind  of  blasphemous  ideas  in  spite  of  all  his  efforts  to 
avoid  them  ;  he  was  greatly  afflicted  by  this  state  of  things,  his 
gloom  increased,  and  at  last  he  concluded  that  "  he  had  done  it," 
— namely,  committed  the  unpardonable  sin.  Here  we  perceive, 
first,  a  morbid  affection  of  nerve  element  revealed  in  the  emo- 
tional depression,  then  an  automatic  and  spasmodic  activity  of 
certain  ideational  cells  manifest  in  the  involuntary  and  irrepres- 
sible ideas  that  arose,  and  finally  the  concentration  or  systema- 
tization  of  the  morbid  action  into  a  definite  delusion.  The  patient 
was  further  very  hypochondriacal,  and  fearful  that  he  should  die 
soon ;  but,  although  his  heart's  action  was  very  feeble,  and  his 
pulse  remarkably  slow,  there  was  no  evidence  of  organic  disease ; 
and  it  appeared  that  the  feebleness  of  cardiac  action  was  due  to 
the  depressing  effects  of  the  morbid  idea  upon  the  organic  func- 
tions, all  which  shared  more  or  less  in  the  prostration.  His 
reasoning  powers  were,  however,  nowise  affected  apart  from  his 
delusions  ;  he  was  fully  alive  to  all  business  relations,  and  would 
converse  intelligently  and  even  cheerfully  on  indifferent  matters. 
But  the  moment  his  attention  was  no  longer  diverted  from  his 
own  suffering,  and  otherwise  engaged,  the  morbid  idea  returned 
in  all  its  force,  entirely  occupied  consciousness,  his  countenance 
became  overcast,  and  he — just  now  so  cheerful — presented  the 
characteristic  dejected  appearance  of  profound  melancholy.  He 
lived,  as  it  were,  two  separate  lives — as  a  sound,  reasonable 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  331 

being,  and  as  a  morbid  automatic  being  ;  he  was  quite  aware  of 
bis  affliction,  and  could  reason  about  it  as  a  man  might  reason 
about  a  peculiarity  of  his  character  or  a  particular  conformation 
of  his  body,  though  he  could  not  be  persuaded  of  its  true  nature ; 
but,  so  soon  as  the  train  of  mental  activity  excited  by  external 
events  was  past,  the  morbid  idea  became  consciousness.  He 
was  made  so  miserable  by  it  that  he  more  than  once  attempted 
suicide.  Herein  we  have  an  example  of  what  is  sometimes  called 
the  correct  reasoning  of  the  monomaniac  from  false  premisses  ; 
believing  that  he  has  committed  the  unpardonable  sin  and  that 
his  soul  is  for  ever  lost,  he  does  that  which  may  soonest  precipi- 
tate the  result  which  he  so  much  dreads.  An  uncle  had  been 
similarly  afflicted,  and  had  died  insane. 

Intelligently  as  this  patient  could  talk,  and  rational  as  he  ap- 
peared, apart  from  his  delusion,  it  would  not  be  correct  to  pro- 
nounce him  perfectly  sensible  under  such  limitation.  There  was 
no  sufficient  reason  in  his  intellectual  disorder  why  he  should  not 
have  continued  his  business,  but  he  could  not  do  so ;  he  could  not 
take  interest  in  that,  in  his  family,  or  in  anything  else  but  him- 
self ;  every  impression  was  more  or  less  painful  to  him,  his  whole 
manner  of  feeling  being  perverted,  and  he  sought  therefore  to 
avoid  society  and  to  be  alone.  At  times,  too,  his  anguish  in- 
creased to  a  veritable  acute  paroxysm,  and  then  he  looked  very 
helpless  and  insane.  Now  the  case  which  follows,  very  similar  to 
the  foregoing  in  general  symptoms,  illustrates,  by  an  important 
additional  symptom,  a  dangerous  feature  in  some  of  these  cases. 
J.  B.,  set.  51,  married,  had  made  a  small  fortune  by  his  own 
energies,  and  had  brought  up  a  family  respectably.  He  was  a 
stout,  hard-faced,  big-browed  man,  of  surly  appearance  and 
melancholic  temperament.  Of  the  Wesleyan  persuasion,  he  had 
always  been  very  attentive  to  his  religious  duties ;  indeed,  reli- 
gious devotion  was  said  to  be  the  cause  of  his  illness,  which 
certainly  began  with  doubts  as  to  his  religious  state.  He  became 
gloomy,  morose,  and  depressed,  and  took  to  his  bed  five  weeks 
previous  to  his  being  sent  to  an  asylum.  He  would  not  get  up, 
however  much  entreated :  why  should  he  ?  He  was  dying,  and 
there  was  no  salvation  for  him,  for  his  soul  was  lost.  He  slept 
fairly  and  ate  well,  though  he  professed  at  times  that  he  could 
not  eat.  In  the  asylum  he  was  listless,  gloomy,  and  exceedingly 


332  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITT.  [CHAP. 

averse  to  exertion  of  any  kind,  always  maintaining  that  he  was 
dying.  "  It's  of  no  use,  I  tell  you,  doctor,  asking  me  how  I  am : 
you  know  I'm  dying."  Apart  from  the  delusions  as  to  his  soul 
and  his  body,  he  was  intellectually  rational,  although  his  affective 
life  was  much  perverted.  After  a  month's  residence,  there  was 
some  improvement  in  his  state ;  he  walked  outside  the  grounds 
after  having  been  almost  forced  to  go  once  or  twice  ;  he  was  more 
cheerful  too,  and  would  talk  a  little.  It  was  thought  that  he 
was  going  on  very  favourably.  One  night,  however,  without 
any  warning,  he  suddenly  started  out  of  his  bed,  rushed  at  a 
window,  through  which  it  would  have  been  thought  impossible 
that  a  man  of  his  size,  or  indeed  of  any  usual  size,  could  have 
got,  struggled  through  it,  and  fell  from  a  height  of  twenty  feet, 
fortunately  on  his  feet,  so  that  he  was  only  grievously  shaken. 
He  was,  however,  in  a  state  of  fearful  excitement,  fancying  that 
the  world  had  come  to  an  end,  writhing,  and  crying  frantically, 
"Let  me  go,  let  me  go!"  Like  sudden  desperate  paroxysms 
seized  him  periodically  for  the  next  three  weeks ;  after  which 
he  began  to  improve.  He  became  talkative,  cheerful,  and  inter- 
ested in  his  family,  though  maintaining  for  a  time,  for  the  sake 
of  consistency  seemingly,  that  he  was  no  better,  and  only  employ- 
ing himself  when  he  thought  that  no  one  was  observing  him.  In 
three  months  more  he  was  discharged  quite  recovered. 

In  these  cases,  when  the  melancholic  anguish  has  reached  a 
certain  intensity,  it  appears  to  be  a  matter  of  accident  whether 
the  convulsive  explosion  is  expressed  in  some  act  of  violence 
directed  against  the  patient's  own  life  or  against  the  life  of 
another,  although  it  may  be  expected  that,  if  the  delusion  is  one 
of  persecution  from  others,  the  violence  will  be  displayed  against 
the  supposed  enemies. 

The  following  case  further  illustrates  the  acute  attacks  of 
paroxysmal  anguish  that  supervene  in  the  course  of  chronic 
melancholia  or  ideational  insanity  with  depressed  passion  : — 

Miss  F.,  sst.  forty-one,  appeared  to  be  as  strong-minded  and 
good-natured  a  lady  as  could  be  met  with.  Her  manner  was 
abrupt  and  decidedly  energetic,  and  she  is  described  as  having 
always  been  a  little  queer.  The  melancholy  for  which  she  was 
finally  sent  to  an  asylum  was  said  to  have  come  on  seven  months 
before,  in  consequence  of  a  supposed  offer  of  marriage  which  she 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  333 

thought  she  had  refused — in  reality,  none  such  was  ever  made. 
She  now  believed  that  she  was  lost  for  ever  in  consequence  of 
this  refusal ;  she  wrung  her  hands  in  her  extreme  distress,  and, 
with  a  face  tense  with  anguish,  exclaimed  that  "  she  had  done 
it ; "  "  that  she  was  so  near  Zion's  gate."  But  her  mental  state 
varied  much,  and  varied  suddenly.  One  day  she  would  be  in 
the  greatest  mental  agony,  rolling  on  the  floor,  writhing  and 
twisting  herself  into  the  strangest  forms,  as  though  in  her  anguish 
she  would  tie  her  body  into  knots  :  on  another  day  her  delusion 
seemed  to  have  retired  into  the  background,  and  she  was  calm, 
natural,  conversed  most  sensibly,  and  employed  herself  indus- 
triously. No  one  who  saw  her  only  in  those  calmer  periods 
could  conceive  how  unspeakably  insane  she  was  in  her  acute 
paroxysms.  In  her  calmer  moods,  when  not  engaged  in  any 
occupation  or  conversation,  and  when  apparently  unnoticed,  she 
might  be  observed  to  wring  her  hands,  and  to  repeat  in  an  under- 
tone, "  Good  God  ! "  When  her  attention  was  called,  on  these 
occasions,  to  what  she  was  saying  and  doing,  she  was  often  quite 
unconscious  of  it.  And  that  might  teach  us  that  the  morbid 
manifestations  were  of  an  automatic  or  reflex  character,  and  that 
it  is  possible  for  such  morbid  phenomena,  under  certain  bodily 
conditions,  to  attain  a  convulsive  character,  without  conscious- 
ness of  them  at  the  time,  and  without  memory  of  them  after- 
wards. The  psychologist  would  be  a  bold,  as  he  certainly  would 
be  an  ignorant  and  mistaken  man,  who  should  assert  that  the 
frenzy  might  have  been  controlled  because  there  was  usually  a 
persistence  of  reason.  It  were  as  just  to  assert  that  the  reflex 
convulsive  action  of  a  spinal  cord  poisoned  by  strychnia  must 
be  controllable,  because  the  ordinary  reflex  acts  of  a  healthy 
cord  are  so. 

It  is  noteworthy,  in  some  of  these  cases,  how  sudden  and  com- 
plete may  be  the  change  from  the  deepest  anguish  and  despair  to 
a  state  of  perfect  calm  and  sanity.  Thus  one  of  my  patients, 
who  suffered  from  acute  melancholy,  who  usually  wandered  about 
moaning  grievously,  or  sat  weeping  profusely,  and  who  had  made 
several  attempts  against  her  own  life,  awoke  one  morning  seem- 
ingly quite  well,  rational,  cheerful,  and  wonderfully  pleased  at 
her  recovery,  remaining  so  for  the  rest  of  that  day.  Next  morn- 
ing, however,  she  had  entirely  relapsed,  and  it  was  some  montha 


334  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

before  she  finally  recovered.  Again  Griesinger  mentions  the  case 
of  a  woman  with  melancholia  and  delusions  as  to  loss  of  property 
and  persecution,  who  for  the  space  of  a  quarter  of  an  hour  was 
quite  herself,  and  then  relapsed.  Such  cases  are  of  interest  in 
regard  to  the  pathology  of  the  disease,  as  they 'would  seem  to 
prove  that  there  is  no  serious  organic  disease  so  far — that  the 
condition  of  nerve-element  is  a  polar  modification  which  may 
soon  pass  away,  not  unlike,  perhaps,  the  electrotonic  state  that 
may  be  artificially  produced  in  nerve. 

Miss  S.,  set.  twenty-two  was  rather  a  good-looking  young 
lady,  though  with  ail  irregularly  formed  head,  and  a  deformity 
of  one  ear,  and  with  a  strangely  wandering  and  occasionally 
vacant  look.  Her  family  is  saturated  with  insanity,  and  the 
present  is  said  to  be  her  third  attack  She  is  surcharged  with 
grief,  moaning  continually,  and  weeping  so  abundantly  as  to 
surprise  one  how  she  can  raise  so  many  tears.  She  exclaims 
that  she  is  utterly  estranged  from  God,  and  sobs  as  though  her 
little  heart  must  break.  Notwithstanding  this  extreme  exhibition 
of  mental  suffering,  one  could  not,  on  carefully  observing  her, 
but  conclude  that  she  was  not  really  so  miserable  as  she  looked, 
that  her  distressing  actions  were  in  great  part  automatic.  And 
there  was  truth  in  the  instinctive  suspicion ;  for  in  the  midst  of' 
the  most  violent  sobbing,  she  would  sometimes,  on  the  occasion 
of  a  ludicrous  or  sarcastic  observation,  look  up  quite  calmly, 
speak  quietly,  and  even  smile  for  a  moment,  and  thereupon 
relapse  instantly  into  her  extreme  grief.  She  was  quite  con- 
scious of  her  state,  and  threw  all  the  blame  of  it  upon  her  friends, 
who,  she  said,  ought  to  have  subjected  her  to  proper  restraint 
and  discipline,  instead  of  indulging  her  in  every  way,  as  they  had 
done.  Previously  to  being  sent  from  home  she  had  been  very 
wilful  and  impulsive,  sometimes  starting  out  of  the  house,  and 
saying  that  she  must  kill  herself.  After  being  in  the  asylum  for 
a  few  days  she  became  calm  and  composed,  spoke  quite  rationally, 
and  professed  herself  very  well  contented  with  her  position,  and 
with  the  course  which  her  friends  had  taken  on  her  behalf  And 
yet,  while  wearing  this  cheerful  and  contented  manner,  she  was 
secretly  posting  letters  to  her  friends,  full  of  the  bitterest  com- , 
plaints,  meanings,  and  reproaches,  sentence  after  sentence  in 
them  beginning,  "  Oh  God  ! "  Eemiuded  of  her  inconsistency, 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  335 

she  sank  into  the  deepest  self-accusation  and  abasement,  said  she 
was  utterly  wretched  on  account  of  her  deceitfulness  and  wicked- 
ness, which  she  could  not  help,  and  that  she  was  lost  for  ever. 
And,  indeed,  she  could  not  help  it.  She  was  sincerely  cheerful 
in  her  new  relations  when  engaged  in  conversation,  or  in  some 
occupation,  but  when  she  sat  down  to  write  home  the  old  feelings 
returned,  and  the  old  automatic  morbid  activity  broke  out. 
Ultimately  she  recovered,  the  morbid  tension  gradually  subsiding, 
and  finally  disappearing  in  the  entirely  changed  relations.  This 
example  enables  us  to  understand,  in  some  sort,  how  it  is  that 
murderers  in  an  asylum  sometimes  appear  to  be  unconscious  of 
what  they  have  done,  and,  if  they  are  conscious  of  their  crime, 
never  think  they  are  to  blame ;  for  the  automatic  activity  of  their 
morbid  nature  has  surprised  them,  and  when  they  reflect  upon 
the  act  of  violence,  if  they  do  so,  it  is  as  upon  an  act  done  by 
some  one  else. 

The  foregoing  cases  will  suffice  to  illustrate  partial  ideational 
insanity,  although  they  all  fall  under  that  division  of  it  usually 
called  melancholia.  In  conversing  with  patients  so  afflicted,  it 
is  impossible  to  avoid  being  surprised  at  the  strange  discord  or 
incoherency  which  their  mental  character  exhibits:  they  are 
often,  as  it  were,  double  beings — a  rational  and  an  insane  being : 
the  two  beings  cannot  be  brought  into  intercommunication  and 
beneficial  reaction  upon  one  another,  for  the  persistence  of  the 
delusion  implies  the  cutting  off  of  such  interaction ;  as  conscious 
manifestations  they  are  independent,  isolated.  One  day  the 
sound  being  is  in  predominant  or  exclusive  action ;  another 
day,  the  unsound  being :  on  different  occasions  one  might  say 
— "  Now  I  am  talking  with  the  rational  being ;  now  with  the 
morbid  being."  Herein  we  have  the  explanation  of  the  doubt 
which  such  patients  sometimes  have  of  themselves ;  they  are 
not  confident  at  times,  and  appear  only  to  half  believe  in 
their  delusion,  because  they  are  not  then  under  its  entire 
influence:  their  rational  nature  is  in  predominant  action,  and 
they  act  in  their  relations  as  if  their  delusion  really  was  a 
delusion.  It  would  be  a  mistake,  however,  to  put  any  reliance 
on  such  seeming  hesitation:  let  the  delusion  be  excited  into 
activity,  all  doubts  vanish,  and  the  sound  being  is  brought  into 
dangerous  bondage  to  the  unsound  being. 


336  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

In  a  complete  account  of  partial  ideational  insanity,  whether 
accompanied  by  a  gloomy  or  a  gay  passion,  the  effects  of  the 
delusion  should  be  considered — as  was  done  when  considering 
idea  physiologically — first,  upon  sensation ;  secondly,  upon  the 
processes  of  nutrition  and  secretion  ;  and,  thirdly,  upon  the  move- 
ments or  general  conduct  of  the  patient.  As  the  delusion  is 
sometimes  the  final  effect  of  a  morbid  organic  stimulus  result- 
ing from  bodily  disease,  so  it  in  turn,  however  caused,  reacts 
injuriously  on  the  bodily  nutrition  and  on  sensibility.  The 
latter  is  commonly  much  affected  in  melancholia.  There  may 
be  general  or  partial  diminution  or  perversion  of  the  sensibility 
of  the  skin,  or  a  local  complete  loss  thereof ;  and  complaints  of 
precordial  anguish  and  of  strange  epigastric  or  abdominal  sensa- 
tions testify  to  the  perversion  of  organic  sensibility.  These 
complaints,  causeless  as  they  may  seem,  are  not  always  without 
significance.  Illusions  and  hallucinations  of  the  special  senses 
are  frequent :  one  patient,  believing  himself  lost,  sees  the  devil 
in  his  room,  another  smells  a  corpse  in  his  room,  a  third  tastes 
poison  in  his  food,  a  fourth  hears  voices  which  revile  and  accuse 
him,  or  which  suggest  impious  thoughts  and  instigate  violent 
deeds — it  may  be  to  imitate  Abraham  and  sacrifice  his  child. 

The  general  depression  of  tone  in  melancholia  is  felt  through- 
out the  processes  of  nutrition,  although  not  usually  in  observable 
proportion  to  the  great  apparent  suffering.  So  vast  indeed  does 
this  seem  in  some  cases  that  the  wonder  is  that  organic  life  can 
go  quietly  on.  However,  digestion  mostly  fails,  and  constipation 
becomes  troublesome;  the  skin  loses  its  freshness,  and  gets 
sallow,  dry,  and  harsh  ;  the  temperature  of  the  body  is  lowered, 
and  the  extremities  are  cold  ;  the  pulse  is  feeble,  sometimes 
very  slow,  and  even  intermittent;  the  respiration  is  slow,  moan- 
ing, and  interrupted  by  frequent  and  long-drawn  sighs ;  the 
urine  is  in  some  cases  abundant  in  quantity  and  very  pale  in 
colour;  the  menstruation  is  generally  irregular  or  suppressed. 
Everything  indicates  the  depressing  influence  of  the  gloomy 
morbid  idea  on  the  organic  life.  There  is  usually  a  great  want 
of  sleep,  although  patients  are  apt  to  assert  that  they  have  not 
slept  when  they  really  have,  so  little  has  been  the  feeling  of 
refreshment  therefrom.  Eefusal  of  food,  which  is  common  and 
sometimes  very  persistent,  may  be  due  to  other  causes  besides 


HI.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  337 

the  want  of  appetite  and  general  sluggishness  of  nutrition :  it 
may  be  in  consequence  of  a  fear  of  poison  in  the  food,  or  of  a 
delusion  that  the  intestines  are  sealed  up,  or  in  order  to  die  by 
starvation,  or  in  fancied  obedience  to  a  voice  from  heaven. 

There  is  the  same  depressing  influence  exerted  upon  the 
voluntary  movements  ;  these,  like  the  ideas,  are  sluggish  gene- 
rally, and  the  conduct  of  the  patient  accords  with  the  character 
of  his  mental  state.  In  an  extreme  form  of  melancholia  known 
as  melancholia  with  stupor,  M.  attonita,  where  the  mind  is 
entirely  possessed  with  some  terrible  delusion,  the  patient  sits 
or  stands  like  a  statue,  and  must  be  moved  from  place  to  place  ; 
the  muscles  are  generally  lax,  or  some  of  them  are  fixed  in  a 
cataleptic  rigidity  ;  the  patient,  as  if  in  a  trance  or  as  one  only 
partially  awake,  scarcely  seems  to  see  or  hear ;  consciousness  of 
time,  place,  and  persons  is  lost ;  and  the  bodily  wants  and 
necessities  are  alike  unheeded.  Between  this  condition  at  one 
end  of  the  scale,  and  those  cases  at  the  other  end  in  which  there 
is  an  acute  utterance  of  the  internal  agony  in  gesture-language, 
though  this  is  usually  of  a  somewhat  uniform  or  even  monotonous 
character,  there  are  of  course  cases  representing  every  sort  of 
intermediate  stage.  But  where  there  is  the  most  activity  of 
movement  in  melancholia  it  is  confined  to  the  expression  of  the 
mental  suffering,  or  to  the  common  attempt  to  escape  from  it 
by  suicide :  there  is  an  extreme  aversion  for  the  most  part  to 
exercise,  employment,  and  activity  of  a  beneficial  kind. 

In  monomania  proper,  where  the  delusion  is  attended  with  an 
exalted  feeling,  its  effects  upon  sensibility,  nutrition,  and  move- 
ment are  different.  There  appears  to  be  no  real  diminution  of 
general  sensibility,  though  the  sensations  are  not  always  attended 
to,  by  reason  of  the  excited  mental  state  ;  but  hallucinations  of 
the  special  senses  are  by  no  means  uncommon,  and  they  appear 
both  as  occasional  consequences  and  occasional  causes  of  the 
delusion,  which  in  any  case  they  fail  not  to  strengthen.  There 
is  not  usually  any  notable  interference  with  the  processes  of 
nutrition.  The  behaviour  of  the  patient  often  expresses  with 
sufficient  distinctness  the  character  of  his  delusion:  one  may 
reveal  his  exalted  notions  in  his  gait,  manner,  and  address, 
while  another  is  not  satisfied  with  the  capabilities  of  ordinary 
language  to  express  the  magnificence 'of  his  ideas,  but  invents 
23 


338  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

new  and  mysterious  signs  which,  unintelligible  to  every  one 
else,  have  wonderful  meaning  for  him.  A  third  makes  perhaps 
sweeping  plans  and  projects,  enters  upon  vast  undertakings, 
and  sometimes  goes  through  an  immense  amount  of  patient 
and  systematic  work  in  perfecting  some  impossible  scientific 
invention. 

The  courses  which  melancholia  and  monomania  run  respec- 
tively are  different.  In  melancholia  remissions  are  common, 
but  complete  intermissions  rare.  It  is  striking  in  some  cases 
how  suddenly  a  great  change  may  take  place  :  Griesinger,  as 
already  said,  quotes  one  case  in  which  there  was  a  perfectly  lucid 
interval  for  the  space  of  a  quarter  of  an  hour ;  and  I  have  more 
than  once  seen  a  melancholic  go  to  bed  cheerful  and  seemingly 
quite  well,  and  yet  awake  in  the  morning  as  bad  as  ever.  It 
is  never  safe  to  trust  to  these  sudden  conversions  from  gloom  to 
cheerfulness.  When  recovery  does  really  take  place,  as  it  does 
in  half  or  even  more  than  half  of  the  cases  of  melancholia,  it  is 
usually  gradual,  and  takes  place  within  from  four  to  twelve 
months  from  the  commencement  of  the  disease.  After  twelve 
months  a  favourable  result,  though  less  probable,  is  still  not 
hopeless,  for  there  are  instances  on  record  in  which  recovery  has 
taken  place  after  the  disease  has  lasted  years.  Of  the  cases  that 
do  not  recover,  about  half  decline  into  mental  weakness  or  com- 
plete dementia,  the  rest  remaining  chronic  or  ending  in  death. 
Though  death  may  take  place  in  consequence  of  refusal  of  food 
and  exhaustion,  it  is  often  due  to  intercurrent  disease,  phthisical, 
cardiac,  or  abdominal,  and  most  often  to  phthisis.  It  was  in 
melancholies  who  had  died  after  long  refusal  of  food  that 
Guislain  most  frequently  met  with  gangrene  of  the  lung.  I 
have  met  with  it  in  one  such  case. 

The  course  of  monomania,  once  established,  is  very  seldom 
towards  recovery.  The  reasons  of  this  are  not  far  to  seek  :  in 
the  first  place,  monomania  is  often  secondary  to  mania  or  melan- 
cholia, and  represents  therefore  a  further  degree  of*  mental 
degeneration  than  these  diseases  ;  and  in  the  second  place,  when 
it  is  primary,  the  fixed  delusion  is  commonly  the  exaggeration 
of  some  fundamental  vice  of  character,  and  has  been  slowly 
developed.  Whether  primary  or  secondary,  the  fixed  delusion 
marks  tile-establishment  of  a  definite  type  of  morbid  action  of  a 


Hi.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  339 

chronic  nature,  such  as  is  not  easily  got  rid  of  in  any  organ  of 
the  body,  much  less  so  in  an  organ  so  delicate  as  the  brain. 
Nevertheless  recovery  does  sometimes  take  place  under  the  pro- 
longed influence  of  systematic  moral  discipline,  or  after  some 
great  shock  to,  or  change  in,  the  system — whether  emotional,  or 
produced  by  some  intercurrent  disease,  or  occurring  at  the  climac- 
teric period.  As  a  general  rule  it  may  be  said  that  recovery 
does  not  take  place  when  a  fixed  delusion  has  lasted  for  more 
than  half  a  year.  When  it  does  not,  the  disease  remains  chronic, 
or  passes  into  dementia :  the  more  the  exaggerated  self-feeling 
which  underlies  and  inspires  the  delusion  wanes,  and  the  more 
this,  losing  its  inspiration,  becomes  a  mere  form  of  words,  the 
nearer  the  case  gets  to  incoherent  dementia. 

The  reason  why  the  prognosis  is  so  much  more  favourable 
in  partial  ideational  insanity  with  depression  than  in  partial 
ideational  insanity  with  exaltation,  though  sufficiently  set  forth 
already,  might  be  roughly  stated  thus :  that  in  the  former  the 
system  is  painfully  sensible  of  its  infirmity,  depressed  thereby, 
and  feels  the  need  of  amendment,  while  in  the  latter  it  is 
abundantly  satisfied  with  its  condition,  gay,  and  sensible  of 
nothing  to  amend. 

(b)  General  Ideational  Insanity. — This  division  will  include 
all  those  cases  of  intellectual  alienation  which  are  commonly 
described  under  mania,  as  well  as  many  cases  of  general  intel- 
lectual disorder  in  which,  notwithstanding  the  excitement,  the 
evidence  of  much  mental  suffering  leads  to  their  being  placed 
under  melancholia.  In  fact,  it  is  not  possible  in  practice  to 
draw  the  line  of  distinction  between  acute  mania  and  acute 
melancholia,  which  often  blend,  follow  one  another,  or  run  into 
one  another,  in  a  way  that  defies  exact  division ;  for  although 
we  may  properly  say  that  there  is  in  acute  mania  an  excitement 
or  exaltation  of  the  self-feeling,  the  expression  of  which  takes 
place  chiefly  in  the  actions  of  the  patient,  who  sings,  dances, 
declaims,  runs  about,  pulls  off  his  clothes,  and  in  all  ways  acts 
most  extravagantly,  yet  there  may  be  equal  excitement  and 
restlessness  of  action  in  a  patient  who  believes  himself  be- 
witched or  lost,  while  another,  exalted  and  furious  one  day, 
shall  be  frenzied  with  anguish  next  day.  They  all,  however, 
agree  in  being  examples  of  acute  ideational  insanity.  In  most 


340  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

cases,  before  tne  actual  outbreak  there  is,  as  already  set  forth, 
a  premonition  of  it — a  precursory  stage  of  depression,  of  shorter 
or  longer  duration,  sometimes  so  brief  as  to  escape  notice ;  upon 
which  follow  increased  excitability,  sleeplessness,  restlessness, 
extravagance  of  behaviour,  rapid  flow  of  ideas  imperfectly  or 
strangely  associated  or  entirely  incoherent,  and  hallucinations 
and  delusions  of  various  kinds.  This  condition  may  last  for 
some  time  as  an  acute  disease,  and  then  pass  away,  and  recovery 
take  place ;  or  it  may  degenerate  into  a  chronic  state,  in  which 
there  is  a  persistent  incoherence  of  ideas,  and  permanent  delu- 
sions and  hallucinations  exist.  The  last  stage  of  declension  or 
degeneration  is  that  of  dementia,  in  which  not  only  the  orga- 
nized coherence  of  ideas  in  the  supreme  centres  is  destroyed  by 
disease,  but  most  of  the  very  centres  of  ideas  themselves  are 
disorganized  and  rendered  incapable  even  of  morbid  function : 
in  the  extremest  cases  of  dementia  there  is  not  the  capability 
even  of  a  delusion,  so  disorganized  by  the  morbid  degeneration 
is  "that  noblest  garment  of  organization  in  which  the  soul 
is  clad." 

Instead  of  entering  into  a  general  description  of  the  symptoms 
of  acute  mania  and  melancholia,  I  shall  give  an  example  of  each 
of  these  forms  of  ideational  insanity,  interposing  such  commen- 
taries as  may  appear  necessary  to  elucidate  the  character  of  each, 
and  to  convey  just  ideas  of  its  nature,  symptoms,  and  course. 

W.  .P.  was  a  merchant,  of  great  originality  of  thought  and 
energy  of  character,  who  became  insane,  after  making  a  consi- 
derable fortune  entirely  by  his  own  abilities.  His  mother  had 
died  insane.  After  slight  depression,  and  certain  transactions  in 
business,  which  rather  astonished  his  friends  as  being  opposed 
to  his  usual  manner  of  doing  things,  he  broke  out  into  eccen- 
tricities and  extravagances  of  behaviour,  with  which  was  asso- 
ciated an  unaccustomed  liveliness  ;  in  fact,  he  acted  very  much 
as  if  he  were  intoxicated,  turning  certain  pictures  with  their 
faces  to  the  wall,  putting  chairs  in  queer  positions,  walking 
about  the  garden  bareheaded  and  singing;  altogether  he 
appeared  joyous,  and  was  eccentrically  industrious.  If  spoken 
with,  he  was  lively,  witty,  original,  and  satirical,  laughing  with 
a  laugh  of  peculiar  harsh  and  metallic  ring,  which  he  could  not 
have  imitated  when  in  health :  still  he  could  control  himself 


ni.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  341 

for  a  time,  and  speak  with  a  marvellous  assumption  of  calmness 
if  he  pleased.  There  was  so  far  no  positive  insanity  of  thought, 
though  there  was  great  insanity  of  action :  his  condition  might 
be  said  to  represent  an  acute  form  of  that  stage  of  disease  which 
has  already  been  described  as  the  mildest  form  of  hereditary 
insanity.  Degeneration  proceeding,  however,  he  became  in  a 
day  or  two  much  worse  :  he  raved  incoherently  in  conversation, 
was  violent  in  action,  and  not  amenable  to  control ;  his  lan- 
guage was  obscene  and  disgusting,  his  behaviour  not  less  so; 
and  he  represented  very  completely  the  condition  of  a  furious 
maniac,  whose  habits  were  of  the  filthiest  kind :  he  mastur- 
bated with  frenzied  energy,  and  eagerly  licked  up  the  secretion, 
swallowed  his  urine,  and  painted  himself  with  his  fseces,  chanting 
a  wild  chant  the  while,  or  talking  in  rapid  incoherence.  In  all. 
this  extremity  of  fury,  however,  there  were  plainly  evinced  on 
his  part  a  certain  consciousness  of  his  extravagances  and  a  capa- 
bility of  modifying  his  actions  in  certain  regards,  which  could 
not  fail  to  give  his  conduct  the  semblance  of  wilful  defiance  and 
witting  offence  to  the  feelings  and  opinions  of  those  who  had  to 
do  with  him.  As  the  energy  of  this  stage  somewhat  subsided, 
various  delusions — as  that  he  was  made  the  victim  of  medical 
experiments  by  night  and  by  day,  but  especially  by  night — 
were  exhibited  :  the  strange  disease-produced  feelings,  nowise 
conforming  to  the  order  of  his  previous  experience,  and  a 
vague  feeling  of  being  the  automatic  agent  of  morbid  acts  not 
his  own,  were  interpreted  as  the  results  of  external  malicious 
agencies,  as  they  were  plainly  not  within  the  domain  of  his 
conscious  life  and  voluntary  control.  This  condition  of  things 
lasted  for  more  than  a  week,  after  which,  as  the  maniacal  fury 
and  delusions  disappeared,  there  ensued  a  state  of  the  pro- 
foundest  moral  disturbance.  He  was  possessed  with  a  great 
hatred  to  all  those  who  were  especially  his  friends ;  was  sullen, 
morose,  and  gloomy ;  represented,  in  the  unfairest  way,  every- 
thing which  had  been  done  to  control  him — and  he  had  an 
excellent  memory  of  what  had  been  done — as  a  violent  cruelty ; 
misrepresented  any  kindness  or  act  of  attention  from  his  rela- 
tives;  refused  his  food  or  took  it  most  capriciously;  and, 
although  all  positive  delusions  seemed  to  have  vanished,  yet  he 
appeared  to  look  upon  others  as  responsible  for  all  his  sufferings 


342  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

and  extravagances.  One  might  reason  with  him,  but  even  if. 
he  acknowledged  the  justice  of  the  arguments,  which  he  some- 
times did,  it  was  a  hypocritical  affectation ;  for  to  another  he 
would  immediately  afterwards,  set  forth  his  unparalleled  griev- 
ances in  the  most  perverse  and  untrue  manner — more  untrue 
because  he  so  completely  twisted  and  perverted  some  little  truth. 
When  well,  he  had  always  displayed  a  scrupulous  regard  for 
truth.  There  was  no  intellectual  incoherence,  but  marvellous 
ingenuity  :  he  could  assume  such  an  appearance  of  calmness  and 
logical  moderation  in  his  complaints,  accusations,  and  statements 
as  would  deceive  the  very  elect.  And  he  actually  succeeded  in 
imposing  upon  an  influential  friend,  who,  himself  a  most  honour- 
able man,  was  so  much  influenced  by  the  calmness  and  coherence 
of  his  stories,  and  by  the  plausible  way  in  which  he  accounted 
for  all  his  peculiarities,  as  consequences  of  the  position  in  which 
he  was  placed,  or  slurred  them  over,  that  he  represented  in  the 
strongest  possible  manner  to  his  immediate  relatives  the  injustice 
of  keeping  him  longer  under  any  sort  of  restraint.  Accordingly, 
in  this  condition  of  imperfect  convalescence,  of  unquestionable 
extreme  moral  or  affective  insanity,  and  in  opposition  to  medical 
remonstrances,  the  patient  was  freed  from  all  restraint :  all  the 
people  in  his  neighbourhood  thinking  that  he  had  been  most 
unjustly  confined.  The  consequence  was,  that  in  the  course  of  a 
few  weeks  he  had  so  managed,  or  rather  mismanaged,  his  property 
— selling  stock  at  great  loss,  and  giving  away  large  sums  of  money 
under  the  most  singular  pretences — as  to  afford  an  excellent 
harvest  to  the  lawyers,  and  greatly  to  impoverish  his  children. 
It  was  found  absolutely  necessary  to  place  him  under  restraint 
again,  where  he  will  remain  doubtless  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 
For  although  he  was  apparently  quite  rational  for  three  or 
four  weeks  at  a  time,  yet  the  attacks  of  mania  constantly  re- 
curred, gradually  becoming  more  prolonged  and  the  intervals 
of  sanity  less,  until  the  disease  acquired  the  character  of 
dementia. 

In  this  case  we  may  observe  that  the  first  stage  of  the  dege- 
neration was  a  short  period  of  unquiet  and  of  unaccountable 
depression,  which  Guislain  believed  to  occur  in  the  great 
majority  of  instances,  and  which  not  unfrequently  precedes  an 
ordinary  fever  or  other  grave  disease  :  it  is,  as  it  were,  the 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  343 

projected  shadow  that  portends  a  great  calamity,  the  foresha- 
dowing gloom  or  painful  forefeeling  of  the  coming  storm.  After- 
wards there  quickly  followed  a  stage  of  so-called  exaltation,  in 
which  the  patient  seemed  to  be  in  an  exuberantly  happy  state, 
as  though  transported  with  some  joyful  tidings,  and  perpetrated 
various  extravagances  of  speech  and  action  as  though  from  an 
overflow  of  life.  Some  have  not  hesitated  to  describe  this  con- 
dition as  one  of  increased  mental  activity  ;  even  Schroeder  van 
der  Kolk  has  fallen  into  what  we  cannot  but  consider  this  great 
error.  The  real  state  of  the  patient  is  one  of  irritable  weakness : 
he  is  unduly  impressible,  abnormally  excitable,  and  reacts  in 
sudden  impulses  of  feeling,  thought,  speech,  and  action,  which 
more  resemble  spasms  than  anything  else ;  he  is  entirely  incapa- 
citated for  the  calm  reception  and  discrimination  of  impres- 
sions, the  subsequent  quiet  reflection, -and  final  intelligent  act  of 
volition — the  complete  co-ordination  of  mental  action,  which  is 
implied  in  the  highest  mental  activity ;  his  words  and  actions 
are  like  the  idiot's  tale,  "  full  of  sound  and  fury,  but  signifying 
nothing."  The  condition  of  nerve  element,  which  is  the  basis 
of  this  excitability,  is  a  reaction  after  the  preceding  depression, 
and  it  marks  the  commencement  of  a  degeneration  which,  if  not 
cheeked,  will  go  on  to  the  further  stage  of  positive  maniacal 
degeneration  of  mental  action,  like  as  the  reaction  of  other 
kinds  of  organic  element  that  have  been  chemically  or  mecha- 
nically injured  passes  into  inflammation  and  purulent  degene- 
ration :  it  is  a  state  of  instability  of  composition  corresponding 
to  that  which  is  the  condition  of  the  mildest  forms  of 
hereditary  insanity,  where,  as  already  pointed  out,  such  striking 
exhibitions  of  particular  talents  sometimes  occur. 

Striking  in  this  case  was,  what  is  often  observable  in  other 
cases,  the  metallic  ring  of  the  strangely  altered  voice.  This 
maniacal  change  in  the  tone  of  voice,  which  is  apt  to  grate  so 
harshly  on  the  sensibilities  of  those  unaccustomed  to  hear  it, 
testifies  not  less  surely  than  the  deranged  thought,  perverted 
sensibility,  and  furious  conduct  to  the  profound  and  general  dis- 
turbance of  the  nervous  system.  "  When  a  man  is  a  lunatic," 
says  Dr.  Bucknill,  "he  is  a  lunatic  to  his  finger  ends :"  he  is 
alienated  from  himself  both  bodily  and  mentally.  I  cannot  help 
making  the  remark  here,  that  in  almost  every  disease,  but 


344  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP, 

especially  in  insanity,  there  are  a  great  many  unobtrusive 
symptoms  in  which  nature  speaks  that  are  almost  entirely 
overlooked,  attention  being  so  much  fixed  on  a  few  prominent 
symptoms.  In  insanity,  for  example,  there  is  not  only  the 
changed  tone  of  the  voice,  but  there  are  peculiarities  in 
the  expression  of  the  countenance,  in  the  look  of  the  eye,  in 
the  posture  of  the  body :  these  constitute  the  physiognomy  of 
the  disease,  and  deserve  the  most  exact  study.  I  think  it  not 
impossible  in  many  cases  to  determine  from  such  signs  not  only 
whether  the  patient  is  suicidal,  but  in  what  degree  he  is  suicidal 
— whether  at  any  rate  there  is  a  desperate  impulse  that,  like  an 
evil  fate,  governs  the  patient  and  waits  and  watches  for  oppor- 
tunities, or  whether  a  fluctuating  impulse  is  excited  to  activity 
by  opportunities.  Again,  there  are  great  diversities  in  the  cha- 
racter of  what  we  confound  under  the  general  name  of  pain,  as 
well  as  in  the  character  of  those  manifold  modifications  of  sen- 
sibility which  fall  short  of  pain,  all  which  have  their  specific 
meanings  had  we  but  the  knowledge  to  interpret  them.  Two 
circumstances,  noteworthy  in  many  cases  of  insanity,  were 
marked  in  the  case  under  consideration :  these  were,  the  peculiar 
indescribable  odour  of  the  patient — the  bouquet  des  malades  of 
lunatic  wards — and  the  intensely  offensive  character  of  the  in- 
testinal excretions.  Manifestly  there  is  some  unknown  chemical 
change  produced  in  the  excretory  functions  by  the  profound 
nervous  disturbance,  not  otherwise  than  as  secretions  are  ob- 
servably altered  in  composition  by  passion ;  and  the  result 
attests,  as  other  effects  just  mentioned  do,  the  essential  interaction 
of  the  mental  life  in  the  whole  bodily  life,  and  the  impossibility 
of  separating,  save  in  thought,  mental  and  bodily  phenomena, 
It  behoves  us  therefore  to  carry  with  us  to  the  investigation  of 
any  case  of  insanity  a  deep  sense  of  the  importance  of  scru- 
pulously studying  every  sign  of  physical  disturbance,  motor, 
sensoiy,  or  nutritive,  as  well  as  the  prominent  mental  symptoms. 
The  third  stage  of  degeneration  exhibited  by  the  patient  was 
that  of  acute  maniacal  fury  ;  of  which  it  is  not  necessary  to  say 
more  than  to  point  attention  to  the  evidence  of  the  persistence 
of  a  certain  amount  of  self-consciousness,  and  the  occasional 
manifestation  of  a  certain  power  of  self-control  for  a  moment. 
This  is  the  more  necessary  because  of  the  foolish  criterion  of 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  345 

responsibility  sanctioned  by  English  law,  or  rather  by  English 
lawyers.  Certainly  this  patient,  at  all  but  his  very  worst  mo- 
ments, and  perhaps  even  then,  was  conscious  of  what  he  was 
doing  at  the  time,  as  he  had  an  exact  and  complete  memory  of 
.it  afterwards,  and  was  quite  aware  that  it  was  disgusting  and 
offensive  to  those  around  him  ;  he  had  even  some  power  of  self- 
control  at  times,  as  he  would  not  do  before  me  what  he  would 
do  before  attendants  ;  so  that  if  the  legal  criterion  of  responsi- 
bility had  been  strictly  applied  to  his  actions,  this  man,  suffering 
the  extremity  of  maniacal  disease,  would  not  have  escaped  pun- 
ishment. As  the  maniacal  fury  subsided  and  delusions  appeared, 
the  disease  becoming  more  chronic,  we  might  say  that  a  fourth 
chronic  stage  was  passed  through — a  stage  characterised  by  the 
persistence  of  ideational  disorder;  that  is,  not  only  of  morbid 
ideas,  but  of  the  morbid  association  of  ideas,  after  excitement  of 
conduct  had  ceased.  From  this  the  patient  soon  passed  into  the 
fifth,  well-marked  stage  of  affective  insanity,  a  condition  which 
usually  lasts  for  some  time  after  ideational  disturbance  has 
disappeared.  The  result  of  his  premature  removal,  while  so 
suffering,  affords  an  excellent  illustration  of  the  truth  of  the 
observation  of  Esquirol,  that  the  disappearance  of  hallucination 
or  delusion  is  only  a  certain  sign  of  convalescence  when  the 
patients  return  to  their  natural  and  original  affections.  At  the 
earlier  period  of  the  disease  there  succeeded  to  this  stage  an 
interval  of  apparently  perfect  sanity  before  the  supervention  of 
a  new  attack,  but  as  time  went  on  this  interval  became  less  evi- 
dent, and  at  last  was  omitted  altogether ;  so  that,  instead  of  a 
recurrent  mania,  there  was  a  continued  mania  established, 
with  regular  stages  of  exacerbation  and  decline,  and  a  steady 
declension  towards  the  last  stage  of  all,  that  of  dementia, 
took  place. 

Now  if  we  choose  to  suppose,  as  we  might  not  unfairly  do, 
each  of  the  stages  of  disease  gone  through  by  this  patient  to 
exist  in  some  individual,  and  to  constitute  his  permanent  state — if 
we  conceive  in  fact  the  progress  of  degeneration  through  genera- 
tions instead  of  through  the  individual  life— then  we  may  form  a 
tolerably  correct  idea  of  the  varying  forms  of  general  ideational 
insanity  that  are  met  with.  In  one  person  the  fury  of  action 
may  be  most  marked;  in  another,  the  delirium  of  thought, 


346  FARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP 

chronic  or  acute ;  and  in  a  third  there  is  a  predominance  of  the 
affective  disorder.  If  we  eliminate  the  element  time  in  con- 
sidering the  course  of  mental  disease,  and  do  not  suffer  our 
thoughts  to  be  constrained  by  it,  we  may  certainly  be  enabled  to 
get  more  correct  views  of  the  relations  which  the  different  forms 
bear  to  one  another ;  the  events  of  generations  and  of  the  indi- 
vidual life  are  brought  together  within  the  same  compass  of  time, 
and  pass  in  procession  before  the  imagination,  as  it  were,  on  the 
same  theatre :  a  morbid  stage,  which  might  scarcely  be  noticed 
or  might  be  entirely  passed  over  on  account  of  its  rapidity  and 
briefness  in  the  individual,  will  be  distinctly  evolved  in  the 
progress  extending  through  generations  ;  and  a  phase  of  disease 
which  might  have  an  exaggerated  importance  or  an  independent 
character  assigned  to  it  in  the  generation  will  receive  its  right 
interpretation  by  a  consideration  of  the  course  of  the  disease  in 
the  individual.  Had  this  principle  been  at  all  times  clearly 
apprehended,  it  may  be  justly  questioned  whether  any  one 
would  have  been  found  to  doubt  or  misinterpret  those  obscurer 
forms  of  mental  disease  that  have  been  the  cause  of  so  much 
unprofitable  contention  and  angry  feeling. 

A  form  of  most  acute  mania,  which  runs  a  rapid  course,  de- 
serves particular  attention,  both  on  account  of  the  rapidity  of  its 
course,  the  gravity  of  the  prognosis,  and  the  special  treatment 
demanded.  It  is  really  an  acute  maniacal  delirium  rather  than 
a  systematized  mania,  the  delire  aigue  of  French  authors,  and  is 
characterised  by  great  excitement,  entire  incoherence,  apparent 
unconsciousness  of  what  is  going  on  around,  and  extreme  restless- 
ness ;  the  course  of  the  disease  being  swift  either  to  recovery  or  to 
death.  The  following  example  will  serve  to  illustrate  it : — A  cook 
in  a  gentleman's  family,  whose  age  was  not  known,  though  plainly 
between  forty  and  fifty,  was  rather  suddenly  attacked  with  acute 
mania.  Nothing  was  known  of  her  previous  history,  but  she 
had  been  considered  by  her  fellow-servants  to  be  a  little  peculiar, 
and  she  had  suffered  from  a  chronic  erysipelatous  inflammation 
of  one  leg,  which  had  disappeared  a  short  time  before  her  attack 
of  insanity.  She  had  been  ill  seven  days  when  admitted  into  the 
hospital,  and  during  the  whole  of  that  time  had  been  noisy, 
violent,  and  utterly  incoherent ;  and  she  had  taken  no  food  for 
several  days.  On  admission  her  state  was  one  of  the  extremest 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  347 

maniacal  excitement :  she  was  noisily  incoherent,  stripped  off 
her  clothes,  rolled  on  the  floor,  was  unconscious  of  the  calls  of 
nature,  and  seemingly  unconscious  also  of  what  was  said  or  done 
to  her ;  she  was  continually  spitting  frothy  and  sticky  saliva, 
and  the  look  of  her  countenance  was  horrible  and  heart-rendin^ 

O 

She  could  not  be  got  to  take  food,  and  it  was  with  the  greatest 
difficulty  that  beef-tea,  eggs,  and  brandy  were  administered  to 
her  at  frequent  intervals.  Morphia  made  her  sick,  and  did  not 
make  her  sleep.  This  went  on  night  and  day  for  a  week,  when 
she  was  reported  to  have  become  quiet ;  but  it  was  the  quiet  of 
complete  exhaustion.  Her  pulse  was  so  feeble  and  rapid  that  it 
could  not  be  counted,  though  up  to  the  moment  of  the  collapse 
she  had  been  as  excited,  as  noisy,  as  restless  as  ever,  and  she 
still  rolled  on  the  floor,  tossing  her  arms  about  and  pulling  at 
her  clothes.  Next  day  the  heart  beat  feebly  160  times  in  a 
minute,  so  far  as  could  be  made  out  where  no  exact  examination 
was  possible,  and  with  a  certain  undulatory  action  which  raised 
the  suspicion  of  pericarditis  ;  but  there  was  no  increase  of  cardiac 
dulness.  The  skin  was  hot  and  dry ;  there  was  extreme  jacti- 
tation; and  she  drank  fluids  eagerly,  as  she  had  nevar  done 
before.  I  thought  there  was  some  abdominal  tenderness  on 
pressure,  but  could  not  be  sure  of  it.  Next  day  she  was  clearly 
sinking  fast,  and  muttered  words  which  so  far  as  could  be  made 
out  were  a  request  for  holy  water :  she  was  a  Eoman  Catholic. 
Pressure  on  the  abdomen  now  produced  evident  shrinking.  On 
the  following  day  she  died.  On  examination  of  the  body  after 
death,  the  pericardium,  when  opened,  was  found  not  to  contain 
a  drop  of  fluid ;  its  surface  was  dry,  rough,  and  markedly  injected, 
and  its  substance  seemingly  thickened  generally,  and  certainly 
so  in  parts  by  oblong  patches  of  lymph  of  old  standing.  There 
were  similar  layers  of  lymph  on  the  heart,  the  substance  of 
which  was  pale  and  flabby,  and  its  cavities  were  full  of  blood, 
mostly  uncoagulated.  The  intestines  were  almost  universally  of 
a  rosy  red  hue,  which  on  closer  inspection  was  seen  to  be  due  to 
injected  vessels.  The  arachnoid  was  slightly  clouded,  like  glass 
gently  breathed  upon,  and  streaked  with  a  delicate  milky  opacity 
along  the  lines  of  the  vessels,  while  it  was  bulged  at  the  sulci 
by  a  clear  serous  fluid  beneath.  The  ventricles  were  filled  with 
a  similar  fluid,  which  existed  also  in  considerable  quantity  at  the 


348  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

base  of  the  brain.  On  slicing  the  brain  numerous  red  spots  were 
visible,  and  when  the  surface  of  the  cerebellum  was  exposed  it 
was  seen  to  be  strongly  injected  in  beautiful  arborescent  fashion. 
Had  the  examination  been  carried  further  into  the  minute 
structure  by  a  competent  microscopist,  I  doubt  not  that  the 
ideational  cells  of  the  cortical  layers  would  have  been  found 
to  be  clouded  and  troubled  like  as  the  arachnoid  was.  The 
visible  morbid  appearances  at  any  rate  were  instructive  and  in- 
teresting, and  afforded  some  compensation  for  the  painful  feeling 
of  utter  helplessness  which  one  had  had  in  face  of  the  disease 
during  life.  An  obvious  speculation  as  to  the  cause  of  the  dis- 
ease could  not  fail  to  present  itself:  that  an  erysipelas  disap- 
pearing from  the  surface  of  the  body  had  selected  for  attack  the 
arachnoid  and  other  serous  membranes.  Though  the  issue  was 
fatal  in  this  case,  it  is  not  so  in  all  cases  of  acute  maniacal 
delirium ;  it  is,  however,  a  disease  which  should  unquestionably 
be  regarded  seriously,  both  on  account  of  its  occasional  intrac- 
tableness,  and  on  account  of  the  suddenness  with  which  fatal 
exhaustion  may  supervene. 

I  now  proceed  to  relate  the  history  of  a  case  which  would 
usually  be  described  as  a  typical  example  of  acute  melancholia, 
because  of  the  fixed  mental  suffering  that  accompanied  the  inco- 
herence and  excitement.  It  was  of  a  very  extreme  kind,  and 
illustrates  what  an  amount  of  consciousness  may  sometimes  co- 
exist with  the  most  desperate  insanity.  A  young  woman,  aet. 
24,  whose  parents  were  Dissenters  in  a  respectable  position,  had 
been  religiously  brought  up ;  she  had  been  much  engaged  in 
Sunday-school  work,  and  had  written  several  little  tracts  of  more 
or  less  merit.  When  first  seen  by  me  she  was  said  to  have  been 
ill  for  two  months,  but  there  was  some  probability  that  she  had 
suffered  for  a  longer  period.  She  was  miserably  restless  and  un- 
happy, and  wandered  about  moaning  and  exclaiming,  "  My  poor 
father  !  My  poor  father  ! "  She  also  spoke  incoherently  of  the 
house  being  burnt  down,  and  of  every  one  in  it  being  lost ;  and 
she  made  several  attempts  at  suicide.  After  a  little  while  she 
became  still  worse  :  she  was  most  excited  during  the  day,  rushing 
wildly  at  any  door  the  moment  it  was  opened,  grasping  at  the 
clothes  of  anyone  who  might  enter,  and  clinging  to  them  with  offen- 
sive tenacity ;  and  at  night  she  slept  not,  tore  to  pieces  bedclothes, 


in.]  FARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  349 

nightdress,  and  whatever  else  she  could  tear,  and  plastered  herself 
and  her  chamber  with  her  excrement.  Day  by  day,  she  seemed 
to  get,  if  possible,  worse  and  worse,  gabbling  automatically  some 
such  sentence  as  "  Let  me  see  my  poor  father ;  let  me  kiss  my 
poor  father,"  and  making  the  most  frantic  rushes  at  any  door 
that  was  opened,  no  matter  where  it  led  to.  Night  was  not  the 
time  for  sleep,  but  for  the  awakening  of  a  more  disgusting  frenzy. 
Withal  it  was  clear  that,  notwithstanding  her  terrible  and  dis- 
tressing excitement,  she  knew  what  she  was  doing,  and  could 
control  herself  in  some  measure  for  a  time  ;  she  did  not  like,  for 
example,  to  be  put  in  seclusion,  and  the  threat  or  employment 
of  that  means  of  treatment  had  a  calming  effect  upon  her.  On 
the  whole,  there  was  certainly  an  appearance  of  wilfulness  in 
the  worst  acts  of  this  poor  woman,  whom  an  ordinary  observer 
would  have  pronounced  the  maddest  person  that  he  could  ima- 
gine :  she  was  perfectly  conscious  whether  she  was  doing  what 
she  should  do  or  should  not  do ;  and  if  a  sufficiently  powerful 
motive  was  excited,  she  could  sometimes  restrain  the  auto- 
matic utterance  of  her  convulsive  frenzy.  Had  the  supremely 
absurd  question  whether  she  knew  the  difference  beween  right 
and  wrong  been  put  to  a  medical  witness  in  her  case,  the  reply, 
so  far  as  rational  ans'wer  could  be  made  to  irrational  question, 
must  needs  have  been,  that  she  did.  In  many  like  instances  of 
hereditary  insanity  nothing  is  more  clear  than  the  persistence  of 
consciousness  with  the  most  extreme  insanity  of  action.  In  this 
case,  the  so-called  asylum  ear,*  which  is  ever  of  evil  augury, 
appeared  first  on  one  side  and  then  on  the  other,  and  the  end 
was  the  natural  end  of  such  cases, — namely,  dementia :  the  fury 
had  raged  out,  and  the  calm  of  mental  extinction  followed :  by 
making  a  desert  of  the  mind  there  was  made  peace.  As  in  the 
natural  order  of  events  convulsion  is  the  forerunner  of  paralysis, 

*  The  "Insane  ear" — Hsematoma  auris,  or  Othsematoma — is  produced  by  an 
effusion  of  blood  under  the  perichondrium,  which  is  stripped  from  the  cartilage,  or, 
as  some  hold,  by  an  effusion  within  the  cartilage.  It  may  remain  some  time  in  the 
cystic  stage,  absorption  finally  taking  place,  and  the  ear  becoming  dry  and  shrivelled. 
When  it  appears,  the  prognosis  is  very  unfavourable.  Some  have  attributed  it 
to  a  traumatic  cause,  but  its  gradual  manner  of  coming  on,  its  symptoms,  and 
duration,  are  widely  different  from  those  of  a  contusion.  Dr.  Stiff,  who  has  inves- 
tigated its  nature  most  carefully,  believes  that  there  is  no  foundation  for  supposing 
it  to  be  produced  by  injury. — Hsematoma  auris,  Brit,  and  For.  Review,  1858. 


350  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP 

so  maniacal  fury  is  the  natural  forerunner  of  dementia  in  the 
regular  course  of  mental  degeneration. 

In  this  case  there  is  notable  a  feature  which  is  observed  also 
in  most  other  cases  of  acute  melancholia,  and  which,  indeed, 
constitutes  a  point  of  difference  between  it  and  acute  mania : 
it  is  the  monotonous  and  apparently  automatic  character  of  the 
expression  of  the  disease,  whether  in  the  delirious  ideas  or  in 
frenzied  actions.  We  know  not  why  it  should  be  so,  but  so  it 
is,  that  the  most  excited  melancholies  exhibit  far  less  variety  in 
their  delusions  and  conduct  than  the  acute  maniac.  The  more 
activity  of  movement  there  is,  however,  in  melancholia,  as  the 
expression  of  the  mental  suffering,  the  more  acute  the  utter- 
ance of  the  agony  in  gesture-language — in  the  wringing  of  the 
hands  and  the  writhing  of  the  body — the  nearer  does  the  case 
approach  mania. 

It  is  striking  how  complete  in  some  cases  of  general  ideational 
insanity  is  the  memory  of  the  past  during  the  attack,  and  of  all 
that  has  happened  during  the  attack  after  it  has  passed  off;  but 
in  other  instances,  especially  those  of  acute  maniacal  delirium, 
the  patient  forgets  altogether  the  events  of  his  madness,  like  as 
a  dream  is  forgotten,  though  he  may  remember  them  again 
during  a  subsequent  outbreak.  Immediately  before  a  second 
attack  it  sometimes  happens  that  thoughts  and  feelings  displayed 
on  the  occasion  of  a  first  attack,  but  latent  since,  will  reappear, 
so  that  even  attendants  are  able  to  recognise  the  evil  presage, 
and  to  predict  the  outbreak. 

Hallucinations  of  the  different  senses  are  common  enough 
in  acute  mania  and  melancholia,  and  illusions  still  more  so; 
but  both  are  usually  of  a  fleeting  and  fluctuating  character. 
Patients  hear  voices  address  them,  see  persons  that  have  no 
real  existence,  or  mistake  for  others  those  whom  they  really  do 
see,  taste  poison  in  their  food,  smell  strange  odours,  or  feel 
unaccountable  shocks,  which  they  attribute  to  electricity  or 
witchcraft.  Some  have  thought  that  the  long  endurance  of  the 
great  expenditure  of  energy  in  acute  insanity  may  be  owing  to 
a  perversion  of  the  muscular  sense,  by  reason  of  which  the  true 
state  of  the  muscles  is  not  declared  in  consciousness.  There  can 
be  no  doubt  that  the  centres  of  motor  residiia  are  very  much 
disordered,  just  as  the  centres  of  ideas  are :  a  patient  lying  in  his 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  351 

bed  fancies,  therefore,  that  he  is  moving,  or  that  his  limbs  are 
Hying  through  the  air;  he  has  motor  illusions  and  hallucinations, 
and  the  muscular  sense  is  so  perverted  that  it  cannot  make 
known  the  real  state  of  the  muscles,  and  help  to  correct  by  its 
perception  the  deluded  motor  intuition.  Even  where  there  is  no 
actual  illusion  of  movements  in  acute  insanity,  the  rapidity, 
confusion,  and  incoherence  of  them  attest  not  less  certainly  the 
derangement  of  the  motor  centres  ;  the  movements  are  not  willed, 
nor  do  ideas  of  them  consciously  precede  their  accomplishment, 
but  the  motor  intuitions,  excited  into  activity  by  disease,  instigate 
them  the  moment  they  rise ;  not  resting  there,  moreover,  these 
carry  their  morbid  activity  into  the  intellectual  life,  and  aid  and 
abet  the  morbid  work  going  on  in  the  ideational  centres. 

Considering  the  great  and  continued  agitation,  mental  and 
bodily,  in  acute  insanity,  the  bodily  functions  are  very  little 
affected.  In  the  early  stage,  when  there  is  perhaps  some  febrile 
disturbance,  the  pulse  may  be  a  little  quicker,  but  it  is  after- 
wards scarcely  raised  in  frequency.  The  temperature  of  the  body 
is  slightly,  if  at  all,  increased  in  ordinary  cases ;  but  in  cases  of  a 
typhoid  type,  where  there  are  sleeplessness,  restlessness,  gradual 
wasting,  and  where  the  tendency  is  to  death  from  exhaustion, 
it  may  be  raised  from  3  to  5  degrees  above  the  natural  stan- 
dard.* In  the  insanity  occurring  after  acute  disease,  Dr.  Weber 
found  only  a  slight  increase  of  temperature,  although  this  had 
been  considerably  raised  during  the  previous  acute  disease,  and 
immediately  rose  again  on  the  occasion  of  a  relapse."f-  When 
the  temperature  rises  notably  in  a  case  of  insanity,  we  may  then 
justly  suspect  an  attack  of  some  other  disease,  or  a  tendency  to 
fatal  exhaustion;  in  either  case  the  prognosis  is  made  serious. 
The  skin  may  be  dry  and  harsh,  but  it  is  often  moist,  and  of 
offensive  odour.  Dr.  Sutherland  thought  he  had  discovered  an 
excess  of  phosphates  in  the  urine :  were  this  true,  it  might  be 
supposed  to  testify,  like  the  very  slight  increase  of  temperature, 
to  an  abnormal  disintegration  of  tissue;  but  the  researches  of 
Dr.  Addison  have  not  confirmed  the  statement.^  Constipation 

»  Keport  on  the  Devon  County  Asylum  for  1865. 

t  On  the  Delirium  during  the  Decline  of  Acute  Diseases,  by  Hermann  "Weber, 
M.D. — Med.-Chirur.  Transactions,  1865. 
J  On  the  Urine  of  the  Insane.—  Brit,  and  For.  Review,  1865. 


352  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

is  common,  but  in  some  cases  there  is  an  obstinate  relaxation  of 
the  bowels  ;  not  ^infrequently,  however,  these  are  quite  natural 
Acute  insanity  is  not  often  regularly  progressive  in  its  course  ; 
remissions  usually  take  place,  and  sometimes  there  are  complete 
intermissions,  or  so-called  lucid  intervals.  When  the  attacks 
occur  at  regular  or  irregular  intervals,  they  constitute  a  periodic 
or  recurrent  insanity ;  and  when  a  melancholic  and  maniacal 
excitement  alternate  with  some  approach  to  regularity,  we  get 
what  some  French  writers  have  called  folie  circulaire,  or  folie  a 
douUe  forme.  Since  the  time  of  Esquirol  there  has  been  in 
France  an  ambition  to  discover  a  new  variety  of  insanity,  and  to 
coin  a  new  name  for  it ;  but  the  verbal  distinctions  have  not 
often  stood  the  test  of  exact  observation.  The  duration  of  acute 
insanity  may  be  for  hours  or  months,  and  recovery  may  be 
sudden  or  gradual.  A  furor  transitorius  lasting  for  a  few  hours 
or  days,  and  accompanied  sometimes  by  vivid  hallucinations 
and  destructive  tendencies,  has  been  attested  by  so  many  trust- 
worthy observers,  that  it  is  impossible  to  doubt  its  occasional 
occurrence ;  the  outbreak  is  comparable,  indeed,  with  an  attack 
of  epilepsy,  and,  well  considered,  is  no  more  wonderful  nor 
inexplicable.*  Recovery,  when  it  does  take  place,  usually 
occurs  within  the  year,  and  sooner  and  oftener  in  the  melan- 
cholic than  the  maniacal  form ;  it  is  rare  after  two  years  have 
passed;  indeed,  the  longer  the  disease  lasts,  the  worse  is  the 
prognosis,  which  is  always  unfavourable  in  the  recurrent  form,  and 
where  there  is  an  alternation  of  melancholic  and  maniacal  excite- 
ment. When  recovery  does  not  take  place,  the  disease  passes 
into  chronic  insanity,  or  into  dementia,  or  ends  fatally.  Death 
may  be  due  to  exhaustion,  or  to  some  accidental  disease,  such  as 

*  Numerous  instances  of  such  transitory  fury  are  on  record,  and  might  be 
quoted.  The  following  is  an  example  : — "A  sober  and  industrious  shoemaker 
got  up  early  one  morning  as  usual  to  go  to  his  work ;  soon  after  his  wife  was 
struck  with  his  wild  look  and  incoherent  talk.  He  seized  a  knife,  and  rushed  at 
his  wife,  who  escaped.  The  neighbours  had  great  difficulty  in  seizing  and  dis- 
arming him,  for  he  defended  himself  with  the  knife.  His  face  was  flushed,  his 
pulse  full  and  frequent,  and  his  body  covered  with  perspiration.  In  the  afternoon 
he  became  calm,  and  slept  heavily.  When  he  awoke  in  the  evening  he  was  quite 
himself,  and  remembered  nothing  of  what  had  passed." — Cazauvieh,  De  la  Mono- 
rnanie  Homicide,  1836.  See  also  Yirchow's  Archiv,  vol.  viii.  p.  192 ;  Ueber 
Mania  Transitoria,  von  Dr.  Ludwig  Meyer  ;  and  cases  in  Marc's  work,  De  la 
Folie  considered  dans  ses  Eapports  avec  les  Questions  Medico-judiciaires. 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  353 

pleurisy  or  pneumonia.  It  cannot  truly  be  said  that  acute 
insanity  predisposes  to  diseases  of  the  respiratory  organs,  but 
these  certainly  seem  to  occur  with  considerable  frequency,  and 
gangrene  of  the  lung  has  many  times  been  met  with  after  death, 
especially,  according  to  Guislain,  in  those  who  have  long  refused 
food.  When  maniacal  exhaustion  proves  fatal,  it  sometimes 
does  so  suddenly  and  unexpectedly,  leaving  in  the  mind  an 
anxious  feeling  of  doubt  whether  a  more  energetic  treatment 
might  not  have  prevented  death,  or,  if  energetic  treatment  has 
been  employed,  whether  that  has  not  had  something  to  do  with 
hastening  the  fatal  issue. 

After  the  acute  symptoms  of  an  outbreak  of  insanity  have 
subsided  without  recovery  taking  place,  the  chronic  disease 
exhibits  the  most  varied  features,  according  to  the  nature  of  the 
original  cause,  and  the  extent  and  degree  of  mental  degeneration. 
"When  the  disease  has  been  produced  by  a  moral  cause,  there  is 
usually  considerable  intellectual  power  apart  from  the  delu- 
sions, or  even  manifested  in  the  display  of  them ;  the  case  may 
then  properly  fall  under  partial  ideational  insanity.  When  the 
disease  has  been  produced  by  a  physical  cause,  or  has  followed 
a  severe  attack  of  acute  insanity,  there  is  often  a  great  loss  of 
mental  power,  together  with  delusions,  some  general  feebleness, 
and  incoherence ;  the  morbid  action  has  spread  through  the 
mental  organization,  and  the  case  might  be  referred  to  one  of 
the  groups  of  dementia.  Between  dementia  and  what  is  described 
as  chronic  mania,  the  difference  is  only  one  of  degree  of  degene- 
ration, and  examples  perpetually  occur  that  render  the  establish- 
ment of  any  definite  line  of  division  impossible.  On  the  one 
hand,  then,  chronic  insanity  runs  insensibly  into  monomania 
or  melancholia;  on  the  other,  into  dementia.  The  principles 
which  guide  the  prognosis  in  these  forms  of  mental  disease  will 
apply  to  it.  To  give  an  account  of  chronic  insanity  would  be 
simply  to  describe,  in  tedious  and  useless  detail,  the  physical 
and  mental  characteristics  of  numerous  individual  cases.  It  is 
important  only  to  bear  in  mind,  that  an  excellent  memory  and 
much  intellectual  power  may  co-exist  with  numerous  extravagant 
delusions.  A  lady  under  my  care,  who  fancied  that  not  an  event 
in  Europe  happened  which  had  not  some  hidden  relation  to  her 
and  her  affairs,  who  detected  a  plot  against  herself  in  the  meeting 
24 


354  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

of  a  cabinet  or  in  the  movements  of  a  court,  who  heard  voices 
from  the  ceiling,  and  who  used  terrible  language  in  her  frequent 
outbursts  of  excitement,  had  a  most  exact  memory  of  all  her 
affairs,  and  an  acute  judgment  regarding  them.  It  was  only 
because  she  could  not  control  her  conduct,  but  threatened 
•with  a  loaded  pistol  the  lives  of  those  whom  she  thought  to  be 
her  enemies,  that  it  became  necessary  to  put  her  under  care 
and  control. 

4.  Dementia. — It  is  the  natural  termination  of  mental  degene- 
ration, whether  going  on  in  the  individual  or  through  generations ; 
and  it  is  accordingly  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  chronic,  and 
secondary  to  some  other  form  of  mental  disease.  It  may,  how- 
ever, be  both  acute  and  primary. 

Acute  dementia,  lasting  for  a  few  hours  or  days,  sometimes  fol- 
lows a  serious  attempt  at  strangulation  or  drowning,  or  a  series  of 
epileptic  fits ;  and  in  one  case  which  came  under  my  observation 
there  was  strong  reason  to  believe  that  a  masked  epilepsy  ap- 
peared in  that  guise.  A  man  of  epileptic  visage,  and  said  to  have 
had  "fits"  occasionally,  was  suddenly,  after  some  faintness,  affected 
with  a  blank  confusion  of  mind,  entire  incoherence,  and  com- 
plete inability  to  recognise  anybody  or  anything — to  remember 
the  past  or  to  appreciate  the  present ;  he  was,  in  fact,  completely 
demented.  So  he  remained  for  a  few  days,  and  then  got  quite 
well  Again,  the  insanity  which  sometimes  occurs  after  certain 
acute  diseases,  as  typhus  and  typhoid  fevers,  pneumonia,  acute 
rheumatism,  may  take  the  form  of  acute  dementia.  Lastly,  it 
appears  to  be  sometimes  brought  on  suddenly  by  a  great  moral 
shock,  and  it  now  and  then  occurs  in  young  men  and  women  as 
a  primary  disease  of  unknown  causation,  though  connected  in 
some  way  probably  with  disturbed  sexual  function.  A  pale, 
delicate,  fragile,  blue-eyed  young  lady,  set.  25,  came  under 
my  care  after  being  ill.  for  a  week.  She  had  not  taken  food, 
and  was  much  exhausted.  Her  vacant  wandering  eyes  were 
devoid  of  all  intelligent  perception,  and  her  countenance  was 
blank  and  expressionless.  There  was  a  restless,  agitating  move- 
ment to  and  fro  of  the  body  generally,  and  of  the  head  in 
particular,  with  a  low  monotonous  moaning.  She  was  speech- 
less, and  it  was  impossible  to  elicit  any  kind  of  response,  or  to 
fix  her  attention.  She  took  no  food  but  what  was  forced  into 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  355 

her  mouth,  and  was  inattentive  to  the  calls  of  nature.  Before 
three  months  were  over  she  recovered  under  suitable  treatment. 
She  had  suffered  some  disappointment  of  her  affections ;  men- 
struation had  ceased;  and  acute  dementia  followed.  Another 
somewhat  similar  case  was  that  of  a  young  gentleman,  set. 
19,  of  pale,  delicate  appearance,  with  large  prominent  grey 
eyes.  He  had  for  some  time  been  worked  rather  hard  in  an 
office,  and  had  not  quite  satisfied  his  friends  with  his  mode  of 
life  out  of  it,  when  one  day  he  was  suddenly  attacked  with  a 
quasi-hysterical  attack  of  incoherency.  There  was  blank  con- 
fusion of  mind ;  he  neither  uttered  nor  expressed  otherwise  any- 
thing indicating  ideas  in  his  own  mind,  and  he  showed  no  sign 
of  understanding  what  was  said  by  others.  There  were  occa- 
sional periods  of  confused  excitement.  He  took  no  food  but 
what  was  forced  upon  him,  and  he  was  inattentive  to  the  calls  of 
nature.  Eecovery  cook  place  within  a  month. 

These  examples  will  serve  to  show  the  character  of  acute 
dementia,  and  to  indicate  the  favourable  character  of  the 
prognosis.  The  mental  functions  are  abolished  for  the  time 
by  reason  of  some  severe  shock  to  their  nerve  centres ;  the  ex- 
pressionless countenance  of  the  patient,  his  passive  attitude  of 
body,  perhaps  an  occasional  aimless  and  confused  excitement, 
his  inability  to  understand  what  is  said,  or  to  say  anything 
which  can  be  understood,  and  a  loss  of  sensibility — all  mark  the 
abeyance  of  mental  function.  If  a  restoration  does  not  soon 
take  place,  as  in  most  cases  it  does,  there  is  danger  lest  the 
disease  pass  into  chronic  and  incurable  dementia.  It  is  hardly 
necessary  to  say  that  senile  dementia,  though  primary,  does  not 
get  well 

CJironic  dementia  is  the  form  of  dementia  which  we  most 
often  meet  with,  and  we  meet  with  every  degree  of  mental 
decay  in  different  cases.  It  is  observed  that  after  a  very  severe 
attack  of  acute  insanity  the  evil  effects  are  many  times  visible 
for  a  while  in  a  certain  condition  of  mental  weakness  without 
actual  intellectual  disorder.  The  force  of  the  character  seems  to 
have  been  sapped,  and,  though  perception  appears  to  be  suf- 
ficiently acute,  there  is  some  want  of  power  of  reflection ;  the 
finer  feelings,  moral  and  aesthetic  especially,  are  gone;  the 
physiognomy  has  lost  its  highest  expression,  and  the  individual 


356  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP, 

gives  the  impression  of  a  certain  childishness  of  manner.  This 
feebleness  may  gradually  pass  off  as  time  goes  on  and  strength 
is  regained,  or  it  may  be  more  or  less  apparent  for  the  rest 
of  life.  In  the  latter  case,  recurring  attacks  of  positive  insanity 
are  apt  to  come  on  at  uncertain  intervals,  and  to  issue  finally 
in  complete  dementia.  In  a  lady  under  my  care,  who  had 
suffered  from  an  attack  of  acute  insanity  when  only  fifteen 
years  old,  the  development  of  the  mind  seemed  to  have  been 
completely  arrested ;  twenty  years  afterwards  she  had  quite  the 
appearance,  manner,  and  mental  character  of  a  girl  of  fifteen ; 
and  though  she  had  during  that  period  three  more  acute  attacks 
of  derangement,  these  resembled  in  character  those  that  occur 
in  early  life  rather  than  such  as  are  usually  met  with  in  adults. 
Between  this  mild  form  of  mental  weakness  at  one  end  of  the 
scale,  and  the  extremest  examples  of  dementia,  in  which  mental 
power. is  almost  obliterated,  at  the  other  end,  there  are  met  with 
in  practice  cases  marking  every  shade  of  the  gradation. 

Most  of  the  permanent  residents  in  asylums,  those  who  con- 
stitute the  greater  part  of  the  insane  population  of  the  country, 
are  persons  who,  after  mania,  monomania,  or  melancholia,  have 
subsided  into  a  state  of  greater  or  less  feebleness  and  incohe- 
rence of  mind.  They  represent  in  undistinguishable  varieties 
the  shattered  wrecks  of  the  mental  organization.  Three  main 
groups  of  them  may  perhaps  be  made.  The  first  will  consist  of 
those  who  exhibit  a  few  striking  delusions  which  seem  to  be 
automatically  expressed ;  for  the  strong  self-feeling  which  under- 
lies or  inspires  the  delusions  of  partial  ideational  insanity  has 
faded  away,  and  they  are  no  longer  full  of  self-assertion,  nor 
eager  and  earnest  about  their  opinions.  They  quietly  give  utter- 
ance to  the  most  extravagant  delusions,  as  if  they  were  the  most 
ordinary  truths,  and,  when  under  proper  care,  only  get  excited  for 
a  time  when  these  are  opposed  or  attacked.  The  paths  of  mental 
association  are  broken  up,  so  that  the  delusions  are  cut  off  from 
any  active  influence  upon  such  mental  functions  as  are  left, 
and  all  real  interest  in  the  past  or  the  present  is  abolished. 
The  actions  of  the  patient  exhibit  a  corresponding  imbecility. 
Many  of  them  are  incapable  of  employing  themselves  in  any 
useful  way ;  a  few  may  be  induced  to  continue  their  former 
occupation,  or  to  do  a  little  work  of  a  manual  kind ;  while  the 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  357 

industry  of  others  is  confined  to  gathering  stones,  sticks,  and 
pieces  of  paper.  Strange  propensities  of  all  kinds  are  exhibited, 
— as,  for  example,  to  stand  or  crouch  in  a  particular  corner,  to 
walk  backwards  and  forwards  for  a  certain  distance  on  a  par- 
ticular piece  of  ground,  or  to  ornament  fantastically  the  person 
with  feathers  or  flowers.  The  mood  of  mind  may  be  surly  and 
depressed,  or  brisk  and  exalted,  t  or  placid  and  cheerful ;  it 
appears  to  be  determined  in  great  measure  by  the  previous  dis- 
position of  the  patient.  Hallucinations  and  illusions  of  the 
most  extreme  kind  are  frequent.  A  woman  under  my  care 
used  to  think  she  ate  different  people  in  her  fqod,  and  when  she 
saw  them  alive  still  could  not  be  persuaded  that  she  had  not 
eaten  them:  another  woman  may  lovingly  nurse  as  her  long 
dead  child  a  lump  of  wood  decked  in  rags ;  a  fourth  person,  whose 
singular  movements  seem  unaccountable,  is  busy  spinning 
sunbeams  into  threads ;  a  fifth  continues  violent  movements  of 
his  arms  in  order  to  prevent  his  blood  from  coming  to  a  stand- 
still. The  bodily  health  is  usually  good,  the  patients  frequently 
improving  in  this  regard  as  the  active  symptoms  of  mania  or 
melancholia  subside  into  the  calm  of  dementia. 

In  a  second  group  of  cases  there  is  a  more  general  incoherence 
or  craziness,  without  any  particular  delusions,  but  with  greater 
external  activity.  Although  there  are  no  distinct  delusions 
manifest,  there  are  evident,  in  the  patient's  incoherent  babblings 
or  his  senseless  parrot-like  repetition  of  certain  words,  traces  of 
such  as  existed  in  the  maniacal  stage.  The  morbid  degeneration 
has  advanced  so  far,  that  not  only  are  the  paths  of  association  in 
the  mind  broken  up,  but  the  centres  of  ideas  are  themselves 
disorganized.  Consequently  there  is  an  entire  incapacity  of 
fashioning  into  ideas  the  impressions  made  upon  the  senses,  as 
well  as  a  complete  loss  of  memory ;  in  extreme  cases  there  is 
the  incapacity  even  of  a  distinct  and  fixed  delusion.  There  is 
sometimes  an  entire  indifference  to  what  is  going  on  around, 
and  there  may  be  a  remarkable  insensibility  to  pain ;  or  there 
are  occasional  violent  outbreaks  of  incoherent  passion  and  fury ; 
or  there  may  be  even  desperate  homicidal  violence.  J.  B.  was  a 
demented  patient,  utterly  incoherent,  who  walked  about  mut- 
tering to  himself ;  no  one  could  make  out  what  he  was  muttering 
about,  for  no  .intelligible  answer  could  ever  be  got  from  him, 


358  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

yet  every  one  who  had  had  any  experience  of  him  had  a  lively 
and  well-grounded  dread  of  him.  "Without  giving  the  slightest 
warning  beforehand,  he  used,  from  time  to  time,  to  rush  suddenly 
upon  some  one,  and  deal  him  a  savage  blow,  or  make  a  furious 
attempt  to  strangle  him ;  so  sudden  and  dangerous  were  these 
attacks  that  nothing  would  induce  an  attendant  to  sleep  in  the 
same  room  with  him.  H.  P.,  again,  was  a  heavy,  wild-looking, 
hopelessly  demented  woman,  who  usually  laughed  vacantly  when 
spoken  to,  and  seemed  not  to  comprehend  anything  that  was 
said ;  every  now  and  then,  however,  she  used  to  begin,  without 
any  evident  reason,  to  shriek  and  howl  fearfully,  and  to  stamp 
on  the  ground  furiously,  her  whole  body  being  agitated  by  a 
convulsive  paroxysm.  This  fit  of  agitation  would  often  issue  in 
a  murderous  attack  made  on  some  one  with  the  rush  of  an 
avalanche,  while  at  other  times  she  would  fall  down,  and  lie 
shrieking  and  kicking  for  some  minutes  ;  after  which  she  would, 
with  mechanical  drawl,  murmur,  "1  beg  pardon,"  "I'm  very 
sorry."  The  predominant  mood  is  different  in  different  cases: 
some  are  gay,  happy,  and  prone  to  laugh  and  chatter ;  others 
are  gloomy,  and  display  the  mimicry  of  sorrow ;  while  others, 
again,  are  malicious,  spiteful,  and  addicted  to  a  purposeless 
mischief  with  a  monkey-like  cunning  and  persistence.  The  loss 
of  memory  is  great :  some  have  lost  all  remembrance  of  their 
former  lives,  their  friends,  and  their  own  names  ;  whilst  others, 
who  perhaps  forget  instantly  the  last  thing  said,  can  reproduce 
the  distant  past  with  considerable  fidelity.  The  bodily  health 
is  usually  good,  and  the  bodily  functions  are  well  performed ; 
some  of  these  patients  indeed  get  fat,  and  remain  so  till  an  out- 
break of  excitement  and  agitation,  to  which  they  are  periodi- 
cally liable,  reduces  them.  The  physiognomy  is  blank  and 
expressionless,  especially  when  the  patient  is  addressed ;  it  is 
often  also  prematurely  aged. 

Lastly,  there  is  a  group  of  demented  patients  in  whom  the 
mind  is  almost  extinguished :  who  have  to  be  fed,  moved,  clothed, 
and  cared  for;  who  evince  little  or  no  sensibility;  whose  only 
utterance  is  a  grunt,  a  whine,  or  a  cry ;  and  whose  only  move- 
ments are  to  rub  their  heads  or  hands.  Of  the  three  degrees  of 
dementia  they  represent  the  worst — the  lowest  state  to  which 
it  is  possible  for  a  human  being  to  sink.  Their  existence  is, 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  359 

indeed,  little  more  than  vegetative ;  and  if  they  are  not  carried 
off  by  pneumonia,  tubercle,  or  some  other  disease,  as  they  often 
are,  they  die  from  effusion  on  the  brain,  serous  or  hsemorrhagic, 
or  from  atrophy  of  the  brain,  or  from  the  effects  of  accident,  to 
which,  through  their  apathetic  helplessness,  they  are  much 
exposed. 

Though  secondary  dementia  may  last  for  a  long  time,  it  is 
impossible  that  recovery  should  take  place.  The  condition, 
habits,  and  conduct  of  patients  suffering  from  it  may  often  be 
much  improved  by  proper  care  and  control,  but  their  mental 
decay  will  generally  go  on  increasing  unto  the  end.  When 
death  takes  place,  it  is  sometimes  due  to  effusion  on  the  brain, 
or  to  atrophy  of  it ;  or  it  is  produced  by  accidental  disease,  as 
tubercle  or  pneumonia. 

Now  that  we  have  sketched  the  progress  of  mind  through  the 
gradual  processes  of  its  growth  and  development  to  the  full  evo- 
lution of  its  highest  faculties,  and  have  traced  the  steps  of  its 
degeneration  and  decay  to  its  lowest  degradation  in  apathetic  de- 
mentia, we  may  once  more  call  attention  to  the  analogy  between 
mental  and  spinal  function.     Bearing  in  mind  that  the  functions 
are  mental  in  one  case,  and  in  the  other  motor,  the  results  of 
degeneration  will  admit  of  an  unstrained  comparison.     When 
the  spinal  functions  suffer,  there  is  first  a  loss  of  power  of  co- 
ordinating the  movements  of  the  limbs, — in  other  words,  a  certain 
motor  incoherency;  when  the  degeneration  has  gone  still  further, 
there  is  spasmodic  or  convulsive  muscular  action,  a  condition 
heralded  by  twitchings  and  slight  spasms  at  an  earlier  stage ;  last 
of  all,  when  tilings  have  got  to  the  worst,  comes  paralysis.    So 
with  regard  to  the  morbid  manifestations  of  diseased  mind :  there 
is  first  a  loss  of  power  of  co-ordinating  the  ideas  and  feelings,  a 
certain  incoherence  of  mind ;  at  a  more  advanced  stage  there  are 
convulsive  mental  phenomena,  or  fixed  morbid  ideas,  comparable 
to  motor  spasms  or  convulsions ;  and,  lastly,  there  is  extinction 
of  mental  function  in  dementia,  as  there  is  extinction  of  motor 
power  in  paralysis.     If  I  have  so  far  failed,  however,  in  display- 
ing how  entirely  untenable  is  the  metaphysical  conception  of 
mind  when  brought  face  to  face  with  facts,  and  in  making 
evident  how  necessary  it  is  to  study  the  highest  mental  pheno- 
mena by  aid  of  the  light  which  a  knowledge  of  the  simplest 


360  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

phenomena  affords  us,  no  amount  of  iteration  now  will  avail  to 
counterbalance  a  failure,  the  cause  of  which  must  lie  not  so 
much  in  the  difficulty  of  the  subject,  great  as  that  is,  as  in  the 
defective  manner  in  which  it  has  been  treated. 

5.  General  Paralysis. — It  is  a  form  of  mental  disease  which, 
being  marked  by  certain  distinctive  symptoms,  it  is  necessary  to 
describe  separately.  In  the  great  majority  of  cases  there  are 
singularly  exalted  notions,  extravagant  delusions  of  wealth  and 
grandeur,  accompanying  a  gradually  increasing  general  paralysis 
of  the  muscular  system.  But  as  cases  undoubtedly  occur  in 
which  there  are  no  such  exalted  delusions,  it  is  impossible  to  fix 
upon  the  character  of  the  delusion  as  distinctive  of  the  disease ; 
it  is  necessary  to  define  it  as  a  form  of  insanity  characterised  by 
a  progressive  diminution  of  mental  power,  and  by  a  paralysis  which 
gradually  increases  and  invades  the  whole  muscular  system. 

It  has  an  interest  above  that  attaching  to  the  other  forms  of 
mental  disease  in  the  fact  that  it  selects  its  victims  commonly  from 
the  better  classes  of  society,  and  selects,  again,  those  who  seem 
to  be  buoyant  with  health,  and  at  the  full  height  of  their  energy; 
so  fatal  is  it,  too,  that  it  may  be  truly  said  of  those  once  attacked 
by  it,  that  "  in  the  midst  of  life  they  are  in  death."  The  most 
frequent  cause  of  it  is  thought  to  be  intemperance,  alcoholic  or 
sexual ;  but  it  not  unfrequently  occurs  where  there  has  been  no 
reason  to  suspect  anything  of  the  kind.  Then,  however,  some 
sort  of  hereditary  taint  is  likely  enough  to  be  present.  Two  of 
the  best  marked  examples  of  the  disease  which  I  have  seen 
occurred  in  teetotallers,  who  never  had  been  addicted  to  alcoholic 
excess ;  in  both  of  them,  however,  there  was  hereditary  taint ; 
both  of  them  had  undergone  the  struggles  and  anxieties  springing 
from  a  large  family  and  a  moderate  business ;  and  in  both  there 
was  some  reason  to  suspect  enervating  marital  excess.  General 
paralysis  is  emphatically  the  disease  of  manhood,  for  it  is  hardly 
ever  met  with  before  thirty  or  after  sixty :  the  fact  agrees  well 
with  the  supposition  that  the  sole  cause  of  the  disease  may 
sometimes  lie  in  the  agitation  and  anxieties  incident  to  the  most 
active  period  of  life.  Women  seldom  suffer  from  general  para- 
lysis :  they  are  not  subjected  to  such  severe  mental  activity  as 
men  are ;  they  do  not  suffer  so  easily  from  sexual  excess ;  and 
they  are  not  so  much  addicted  to  alcoholic  intemperance. 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  361 

It  has  been  a  point  of  dispute  amongst  some  writers,  whether 
the  mental  symptoms  precede  the  paralysis,  or  whether  the  latter 
appears  first — whether  the  insanity  is  primary,  or  whether  the 
paralysis  is  the  primary  and  main  affection,  the  insanity 
secondary  and  accessory.  There  can  be  no  doubt  in  the  minds 
of  those  who  simply  observe  cases  without  prejudice,  that  the 
mental  symptoms  are  witnessed  in  many  cases  before  there  is 
any  trace  of  paralysis  visible;  and  that  in  other  cases  the 
mental  disorder  appears  simultaneously  with  the  motor  disorder. 
Whether  instances  do  not  occasionally  occur  in  which  the 
paralytic  phenomena  appear  first,  I  cannot  undertake  to  say 
positively;  Leidesdorf  has  related  the  history  of  one  case  in 
which  the  earliest  symptoms  were  spinal,  the  disease  actually 
beginning  in  the  cord,  and  one  or  two  similar  cases  are  on  record. 
In  51  out  of  86  cases  that  were  carefully  watched  by  Parchappe, 
the  paralysis  and  mental  disorder  were  simultaneous ;  in  27 
cases  the  paralysis  was  subsequent;  and  in  8  the  precedence 
could  not  be  determined.  Before  asserting  in  a  particular  case 
that  there  is  no  evidence  of  paralysis,  it  will  be  well  to  observe 
the  patient  when  emotionally  excited,  or*  after  a  sleepless  night ; 
then  there  may  be  exhibited  a  tremulousness  about  his  speech 
which  is  not  at  all  visible  when  he  is  perfectly  calm  and 
collected. 

The  motor  symptoms  are  first  evident  in  the  tongue,  which 
has  to  execute  so  many  delicate  and  complex  movements  with 
such  exact  precision,  and  especially  in  the  articulation  of  words 
abounding  in  consonants,  where  the  most  complex  co-ordination 
is  necessary;  when  the  patient  speaks  earnestly,  he  does  not 
articulate  clearly,  and  there  is  a  certain  pause  or  indecision  in 
his  utterance,  as  if  there  was  a  difficulty  in  bringing  out  the 
word ;  when  the  tongue  is  put  out,  which  it  is  with  some  diffi- 
culty, there  is  a  fibrillar  quivering  of  its  muscles,  but  it  is  not 
pulled  to  one  side,  There  is  a  tremulousness  also  in  the 
muscles  of  expression  when  they  are  put  in  action,  especially 
in  those  of  the  lips,  which  quiver  as  in  one  just  about  to  burst 
into  tears.  These  symptoms  are  more  evident  when  there  is 
any  mental  excitement.  An  inequality  in  the  size  of  the  pupils 
is  often  an  early  symptom,  but  it  is  not  a  characteristic  one ;  it 
is  sometimes  present  in  other  forms  of  insanity,  and  it  is  not 


362  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

always  present  in  general  paralysis.  As  the  disease  advances, 
the  muscles  of  the  limbs  and  trunk  are  affected ;  in  walking,  the 
feet  are  not  quietly  raised  and  firmly  planted  on  the  ground ;  the 
patient  easily  stumbles  at  a  step,  or  on  uneven  ground,  and,  if 
asked  suddenly  to  turn  round  when  going  straight  forward,  he 
staggers  like  a  drunken  man.  Nevertheless  he  may  be  energetic 
in  walking,  setting  about  it  earnestly,  as  if  it  were  his  business, 
and  pleased  with  his  performance  of  it;  he  does  not  want 
muscular  power,  but  the  power  of  using  his  muscles;  he  is 
unaware  of  his  deficiencies,  and  commonly  thinks  himself 
wonderfully  well  and  strong.  Precise  co-ordination  of  move- 
ment, such  as  is  necessary  for  writing,  sewing,  and  like  acquired 
automatic  acts,,  is  lost.  As  the  disease  still  advances,  the  arti- 
culation becomes  less  distinct,  the  walk  more  and  more  tottering, 
the  knees  fail,  the  patient  frequently  tumbles,  and  finally  is 
unable  to  get  up  at  all  The  contractility  of  muscles  for  the 
electric  stimulus  is  retained.  At  last  the  primary  automatic  or 
reflex  movements  fail;  the  pupils  become  dilated,  but  unequal  in 
size;  the  sphincters  lose  their  power,  and  the  patient  may  be 
choked  by  a  lump  of  food  sticking  in  the  pharynx  and  blocking 
up  the  opening  of  the  larynx,  or  even  getting  into  the  larynx. 
Transitory  contractions  of  an  arm  or  leg  occur  sometimes,  and 
a  grinding  of  the  teeth  is  not  uncommon  in  the  last  stages  of 
the  disease. 

Cutaneous  sensibility  appears  to  be  diminished  in  the  early 
stages,  and  towards  the  end  it  is  sometimes  almost  lost.  There 
are,  however,  occasional  transitory  conditions  of  extreme  hyper- 
aesthesia  of  parts,  so  that  the  patient  shrieks  out  in  agony.  The 
muscular  sense  is  especially  affected,  so  that  the  sufferer,  having 
lost  all  power  of  executing  the  more  delicate  and  complex  move- 
ments, is  quite  unaware  of  his  impotence,  and  deems  himself  not 
less  skilful  than  when  at  his  best  state.  The  special  senses  are 
not  usually  affected  until  near  the  end,  when  smell  and  taste  are 
diminished  or  lost,  and  vision  fails.  One  patient  under  my  care, 
who  at  times  used  to  fancy  himself  blind,  had  vivid  hallucina- 
tions in  the  night ;  on  one  occasion  he  had  a  glorious  vision  of 
angels  descending  from  heaven  on  ladders  of  gold,  and  on 
another,  an  agonizing  vision  of  his  own  wife  in  the  act  of 
adultery. 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  363 

The  mental  disorder  is  generally  marked  by  an  exaggerated 
feeling  of  personal  power  and  importance,  out  of  which  arise 
corresponding  delusive  ideas.  After  a  transient  depression,  per- 
haps, there  takes  place  a  marked  change  of  character  and  hahits  : 
the  patient  exhibits  unwonted  perversities  of  feeling  and  con- 
duct, such  as  surprise  and  grieve  his  friends ;  he  breaks  out 
into  sexual  excesses  quite  foreign  to  his  usual  sober  character, 
or  orders  numerous  valuable  articles  of  all  descriptions  which  he 
does  not  need  and  cannot  pay  for,  or  steals  what  strikes  his 
fancy.  Another  displays  considerable  mental  excitement ;  he  is 
busy  with  wide-reaching  projects  and  speculations,  indifferent  to 
the  stern  realities,  and  in  all  ways  eager  and  ready  to  accomplish 
the  impossible :  like  one  in  a  dream,  he  is  not  limited  by  ex- 
ternal conditions  of  time  and  space,  from  which  in  truth  he  is 
cut  off  almost  as  effectually  as  if  he  were  dreaming  with  his  eyes 
open ;  accordingly  he  finds  no  hindrance  to  a  miraculous  activity. 
A  third  exhibits  a  lack  of  his  former  energy :  he  is  painfully 
troubled  about  little  things,  dull  and  confused  in  his  thoughts, 
and  demented  in  behaviour.  As  the  mental  disorder  increases, 
it  generally  issues  in  incoherence  and  extravagant  delusions  as 
to  personal  power  and  grandeur  :  "  The  miserable  sufferer  who 
can  scarcely  support  his  tottering  body  avers  that  he  has  the 
might  and  vigour  of  Hercules  ;  while  industriously  hoarding  up 
pieces  of  rag,  paper,  or  glass  as  articles  of  value,  he  will  sign  a 
cheque  for  countless  millions,  or  make  an  easy  present  of  New 
York ;  maintaining  that  he  can  command  a  king  to  do  his 
pleasure,  in  the  same  breath  he  begs  piteously  to  be  allowed  to 
go  to  his  own  humble  home ;  or,  with  sexual  power  extinct, 
boasts  exultantly  that  a  princess  shall  be  his  wife  and  princes 
be  bom  of  his  loins.  An  extreme  loss  of  memory  is  in  striking 
contrast  with  the  semblance  of  exaltation:  the  patient  forgets 
entirely  how  long  he  has  been  in  confinement,  or  denies  angrily 
that  he  has  a  wife,  though  recognising  her  gladly  when  she 
visits  him."*  Delusions  of  a  terrific  character,  with  accompanying 
great  emotional  depression,  are  found  to  prevail  steadily  through- 
out the  course  of  some  cases  of  general  paralysis  ;  and  a  day  of 
great  melancholic  depression  now  and  then  intervenes  in  the 
course  of  the  exalted  form.  A  regular  decline  of  intelligence, 
*  Article  "Insanity,"  Beynolds's  System  of  Medicine,  vol.  ii. 


364  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

without  any  marked  delusions, — in  fact,  a  gradually  increasing 
stupidity  from  the  first, — is  the  course  of  one  variety  of  general 
paralysis  by  no  means  of  frequent  occurrence.  Outbreaks  of 
great  excitement  and  violence  during  the  progress  of  the  disease 
frequently  occur :  during  them  the  temperature  of  the  head  was 
observed  by  L.  Meyer  to  be  raised,  and  afterwards  the  mental 
decay  is  found  to  be  increased.  "As  the  disease  approaches  its 
end,  the  end  of  life,  the  dementia  is  extreme,  and  the  face  becomes 
an  expressionless  mask,  across  which  now  and  then  flickers  the 
broken  ripple  of  a  smile,  or  it  is  fixed  in  a  ghastly  sardonic  grin  ; 
but  even  in  the  last  stage  of  mental  disorganization,  when  the 
capability  of  a  distinct  delusion  is  gone,  the  muttered  words  may 
be  about  gold,  and  carriages,  and  millions  of  money." 

General  paralysis  is  a  disease  of  special  pathological  interest 
because  of  the  co-existence  of  mental  and  motor  disorder,  not 
as  an  accidental  circumstance,  but  as  a  constant  occurrence. 
The  patient  loses  the  power  of  performing  both  ideas  and  move- 
ments, and  gradually  gets  worse  and  worse  until  he  dies.  Many 
times  in  the  course  of  this  work  I  have  laid  stress  on  the  manner 
in  which  movements  enter  into  our  intellectual  life,  and  on  the 
close  analogy  between  ideas  and  motor  intuitions  ;  and  now  I 
cannot  refrain  from  calling  particular  attention  to  the  phenomena 
of  general  paralysis  as  confirmatory  of  the  views  enunciated. 
That  the  nervous  centres  of  ideas  are  disordered  is  plain  enough, 
but  it  is  equally  plain  that  something  more  than  these  centres  is 
affected  ;  for  we  get  all  kinds  of  morbid  ideas  in  other  forms  of 
insanity,  without  any  interference  with  motor  power.  Nor  do 
the  muscles  themselves  ail  anything :  the  patient  has  not  lost 
muscular  power,  but  intelligent  power  over  the  muscles.  In 
fact,  what  is  further  diseased  is  the  region  of  the  motor  intuitions 
or  actuation — the  nervous  centres  in  which  the  motor  residua 
are  organized.  In  progressive  locomotor  ataxy  the  motor  centres 
are  diseased,  but  then  it  is  only  the  spinal  centres,  and  the  mind 
is  quite  clear :  in  general  paralysis,  however,  those  motor  residua 
are  affected  which  are  in  the  closest  relations  with  the  intel- 
lectual life,  indeed  essential  to  complete  intellectual  action — the 
motor  residua  of  speech,  those  which  words  in  their  intellectual 
meanings  as  symbols  or  signs  of  the  ideas  imply.  One  of 
the  earliest  symptoms  of  general  paralysis  is  the  difficulty 


in.]  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  363 

noticed  in  giving  fib  outward  expression  to  the  ideas,  by  reason 
of  some  affection  of  the  motor  intuitions  which  are  the  in- 
ternal equivalents  of  the  words  externally  audible.  But  the 
mischief  does  not  end  there :  not  only  does  the  morbid  state 
of  the  motor  centre  lead  to  a  difficulty  of  expression  by  the 
appropriate  movements,  but  the  diseased  motor  intuition  enters 
into  the  intellectual  life,  and,  in  conjunction  with  morbid  ideas 
there,  gives  rise  to  all  sorts  of  extravagant  and  outrageous  de- 
lusions as  to  personal  power.  Now  it  is  well  known  that,  when 
a  delusion  is  fixed  in  the  mind,  the  evidence  of  the  senses  does 
not  avail  to  correct  it — it  is  a  morbid  product,  not  in  relation 
with  the  surroundings,  but '  creating  its  own  surroundings  :  in 
general  paralysis  the  possibility  of  correction  by  the  influence 
of  external  circumstances  is  made  more  hopeless,  is  in  fact  prac- 
tically cut  off,  by  the  failure  of  the  muscular  sense ;  thereby, 
indeed,  the  avenue  by  which  are  acquired  the  notions  of  the 
size,  form,  and  position  of  objects  in  space  is  closed,  and  the 
patient  is  left  an  easy  prey  to  the  internal  disorder.* 

The  course  of  general  paralysis  is  towards  death,  though  not 
steadily  so.  Under  proper  treatment  a  great  improvement  takes 
place  in  the  early  stages,  and  the  disease  appears  sometimes  to 
be  arrested.  A  few  cases  of  actual  recovery  have  been  put  on 
record ;  and,  whether  the  recovery  in  such  cases  has  been  per- 
manent or  not,  there  can  be  no  question  that  there  have  been  in 
exceptional  cases  intermissions  of  such  length  that  the  disease 
has  lasted  for  ten  years  or  more.  On  the  whole,  however,  it 
must  be  pronounced  irregularly  progressive,  its  duration  being 
usually  from  about  a  few  months  to  three  years.  In  the  more 
advanced  stages  sudden  attacks  of  loss  of  consciousness  with 
epileptiform  convulsions  are  frequent,  after  which  the  paralysis 
and  mental  decay  are  both  found  to  have  increased.  It  has  been 

*  It  may  be  considered  tolerably  certain  that  we  could  not  think  without  some 
means  of  physical  expression,  though  thought  is  possible  without  speech. 
Laura  Bridgman's  fingers  moved  both  during  her  waking  thoughts  and  her 
dreams.  Children  who  have  learnt  to  speak,  and  afterwards  become  deaf,  lose  by 
little  and  little  all  they  have  learnt,  unless  great  pains  is  taken  with  them. 
Note,  acrain,  how  frequently  deficiency  of  speech  and  movement  generally  accom- 
panies the  incapacity  of  thought  in  idiots.  It  is  not  difficult,  therefore,  to  b< 
lieve  that  the  gradual  failure  of  the  power  of  movement  in  general  paralysis  may 
aggravate  the  mental  disorder  and  decay. 


366  VARIETIES  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP..III. 

observed  by  Dr.  Saunders  that  the  temperature  of  the  body  in 
general  paralysis  is  generally  one  or  two  degrees  below  the 
average,  but  that  it  rises  during  the  accesses  of  maniacal  excite- 
ment, falling  again  as  calmness  returns.  During  the  so-called 
congestive  attacks,  when  there  is  complete  coma  or  epilep- 
tiform  convulsion,  there  is  generally  a  considerable  rise  of 
temperature :  in  one  case  the  temperature  was  for  some  time  98°, 
but  it  rose  an  hour  after  one  of  these  attacks  to  105°,  and  next 
day  to  106*,  the  patient  dying  in  thirty-six  hours  from  the  com- 
mencement of  the  attack.*  "  In  the  last  miserable  stage  of  all, 
when  life  flickers  before  expiration,  large  sloughing  bedsores 
form,  notwithstanding  the  best  care,  and  diarrhoea  or  pneumonia 
hastens  the  long-expected  ending."  f 

In  the  following  chapter  it  will  be  seen  how  well  the  morbid 
appearances  found  in  the  bodies  of  those  who  have  died  from 
general  paralysis  agree  with  the  symptoms  exhibited  during  life. 

*  Beport  of  the  Devon  County  Asylum  for  1864. 
t  Article  ' '  Insanity,"  op.  cit. 

NOTE. 

The  classification  of  mental  diseases  now  generally  adopted  in  Ger- 
many is  as  follows  : — 

I.  Die  Diepressionzustande.  I.  Conditions  of  Depression. 

1.  Die  Hypochondrie.  1.  Hypochondria. 

2.  Die  Melancholic.  2.  Melancholia. 

II.  Die  Exaltationzustande.  II.  Conditions  of  Exaltation. 

1.  Die  Tobsucht.  1.  Acute  Mania. 

2.  Der  Wahnsinn.  2.  Monomania. 

III.  Die     psychischen      Schwachezu-       III.  Conditions    of     Mental     "Weak- 

stande.  ness. 

1.  Die  Verriicktheit.  1.  Craziness  or  Incoherence. 

2.  Der  Blbdsinn.  2.  Dementia  or  Fatuity. 

3.  Idiotismus  und  Cretinismus.  3.  Idiocy  and  Cretinism. 

IV.  Der  paralytische  Blbdsinn.  IV.  Paralytic  Dementia. 

Die  allgemeine  Paralysie  der  Irren.  General  Paralysis  of  the  Insane. 


CHAPTEE  IV. 

THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY. 

"OEFOBE  proceeding  with  -the  description  of  those  morbid 
•*-*  appearances  which  have  been  met  with  in  insanity,  it  will 
be  well  to  have  regard  to  certain  preliminary  considerations  of  a 
general  character.  Already  the  absence  of  any  physical  appear- 
ances where  psychical  disorder  has  existed,  has  been  dwelt  upon 
at  some  length.  A  patient  dies  in  a  raving  madness,  and  there  is 
no  reason  disclosed  by  pathological  observation  why  he  should 
have  died.  Is  it  a  right  inference,  then,  that  nerve  element 
does  not  subserve  mental  function,  or  is  not  affected  when 
function  is  affected  ?  Certainly  not :  at  present  we  know  nothing 
whatever  of  the  intimate  constitution  of  nerve  element  and 
of  the  mode  of  its  functional  action,  and  it  is  beyond  doubt 
that  important  molecular  or  chemical  changes  may  take  place  in 
those  inner  recesses  to  which  we  have  not  yet  gained  access. 
Where  the  subtlety  of  nature  so  far  exceeds  the  subtlety  of 
human  investigation,  to  conclude  from  the  non-appearance  of 
change  to  the  non-existence  thereof  would  be  just  as  if  the 
blind  man  were  to  maintain  that  there  were  no  colours,  or  the 
deaf  man  to  assert  that  there  was  no  sound.  Matter  and  force 
are  necessary  co-existents,  and  mutually  suppose  one  another  in 
human  thought ;  and  to  speak  of  change  in  one  is  of  necessity 
to  imply  change  in  the  other.  We  cannot  write  the  order  of  the 
variable  winds  or  of  the  shifting  clouds,  but  we  are  none  the 
less  certain  that  both  clouds  and  winds  have  an  order  which 
they  cannot  disobey,  and  which  we  may  some  time  discover; 
and  so  likewise  we  have  the  fullest  confidence  that  in  due  time 
a  means  will  be  discovered  of  penetrating  the  intimate  recesses 


368  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

of  nerve  life,  and  of  making  known  the  physical  conditions  of  its 
functional  manifestations. 

There  are  numerous  facts  available  to  prove  that  the  most 
serious  modifications  in  the  constitution  of  nerve  element  may 
take  place  without  any  knowledge  of  them  otherwise  than  by  the 
correlative  change  of  energy.  After  great  and  prolonged  mental 
exertion  there  inevitably  comes  exhaustion,  which  may  be  so 
great  that  the  brain  is  utterly  incapacitated  for  further  func- 
tion.; a  great  increase  of  phosphates  in  the  urine  testifies  to 
the  disintegration  of  nerve ;  the  individual  is,  so  far  as  power  of 
active  life  is  concerned,  almost  a  nonentity;  and  yet  neither 
microscopist,  nor  morbid  anatomist,  would  succeed  in  discovering 
any  difference  between  the  nerve  substance  of  that  man's  brain 
and  the  nerve  substance  of  the  brain  of  one  who,  after  due  rest 
and  nutrition,  was  prepared  for  a  day  of  vigorous  activity.  The 
sudden  shock  of  a  powerful  emotion  may  produce  instantaneous 
death,  just  as  a  stroke  of  lightning  may,  and  perhaps  in  the 
same  way ;  but  neither  in  one  case  nor  in  the  other  may  there 
be  any  detectable  morbid  change.  If  the  electric  fish  be  per- 
sistently irritated  so  as  to  be  made  to  give  forth  shock  after 
shock,  the  excessive  expenditure  of  energy  leaves  it  utterly 
exhausted,  and  it  can  will  no  more  shocks  until  rest  and  nutri- 
tion have  restored  its  power ;  the  nervous  centres  have  plainly 
undergone  some  modification,  though  we  know  not  the  nature 
of  it.  Instead  of  arterial  blood  send  through  the  brain  blood 
heavily  charged  with  carbonic  acid,  and  the  victim  of  the  expe- 
riment must  inevitably  die  ;  but  who  can  tell  the  secret  change 
that  has  been  produced  in  the  composition  of  the  nerve  ele- 
ment ?  Without  killing  a  man  outright,  it  is  possible,  by  causing 
him  to  breathe  a  mixture  of  one  part  of  air  and  three  parts  of 
carbonic  acid,  to  render  him  as  insensible  to  pain  as  if  he  had 
inhaled  chloroform  ;  but  it  is  the  gross  result  only  that  is  recog- 
nisable by  our  senses.  In  this  regard,  however,  the  experiments 
of  Lister  on  the  early  stages  of  inflammation  are  of  some  in- 
terest ;  for  he  showed  that  carbonic  acid  produced  a  direct  seda- 
tive effect  upon  the  elements  of  the  tissue,  paralysing  for  the 
time  their  vital  energies ;  the  effect  being  transient,  and  the 
tissue  recovering  its  energy  after  a  considerable  time.  The  expe- 
riment brings  us  to  the  individual  elements  of  the  tissue,  but 


iv.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY. 

not  to  the  more  intimate  changes  that  take  place  in  it.  The 
difference  may  obviously  be  the  difference  between  life  and 
death,  and  yet  there  may  be  no  appreciable  physical  or  chemical 
change.  As  regards  the  morbid  appearances  met  with  in  cases 
of  insanity,  there  can  be  no  question  that  the  instances  in  which 
they  are  not  found  are  becoming  less  frequent  as  investigation 
improves ;  and  those  who  are  best  capable  of  judging,  and  best 
qualified  by  acquirements  to  give  an  opinion,  are  those  who  are 
most  certain  of  the  invariable  existence  of  organic  change.  It  is 
known  that  when  a  morbid  poison  acts  with  its  greatest  intensity 
there  are  fewer  traces  of  organic  alteration  of  structure  found 
than  when  the  disorder  has  been  of  a  milder  character ;  and  so 
likewise  organic  change  of  nerve  element  in  insanity,  appre- 
ciable by  the  means  of  investigation  which  we  now  possess,  may 
justly  be  expected  only  when  the  degeneration  has  been  extreme 
or  long  continued. 

1.  Physiological  Researches  into  Nervous  Function. — The  im- 
portant researches  into  the  physiology  of  nerve,  which  have 
been  made  of  late  years,  will  help  to  render  conceivable  the 
existence  of  organic  change  which,  though  undetectable,  is  not 
uncertain.  It  is,  indeed,  of  the  first  moment  that  a  distinct 
idea  of  nervous  activity  as  dependent  on  physical  and  chemical 
processes  should  be  formed.  Because  nerve  is  looked  upon  as 
ministering  to  mind,  the  exalted  and  indefinite  conception  of 
mind  has  reflected  on  its  functions  a  sort  of  spirituality  and  un- 
reality, and  has,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  caused  them  to  be 
set  apart  from  the  category  of  like  organic  processes.  The  meta- 
physically minded  have  not  been  content  to  declare  the  mind  to 
exist  independently  of  all  the  physical  processes  which  determine 
the  mode  of  its  manifestations,  but  they  have  actually  imposed 
metaphysical  conceptions  on  nervous  function  as  the  instrument 
of  so  exalted  a  mission.  However,  the  regions  of  the  wonderful 
are  becoming  less  and  less  as  science  advances  its  lines ;  and 
there  has  now  been  found  in  the  electric  stream  a  means  of 
partially  penetrating  the  hitherto  unapproachable  secret  of  ner- 
vous function.  "With  the  perfecting  of  this  means,  which  may 
justly  be  expected  in  the  colirse  of  time,  it  cannot  be  doubted 
that  the  knowledge  of  nervous  activity  will  follow  as  surely  as  the 
knowledge  of  the  heavens  followed  the  invention  of  the  telescope. 
25 


370  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

In  the  endeavours  made  to  elucidate  the  mechanism  of  nervous 
action,  it  has  already  been  clearly  proved  that  time  is  as  essen- 
tial an  element  as  it  is  in  the  motions  of  the  heavenly  bodies. 
A  definite  period  of  time  is  necessary  for  the  propagation  of  a 
stimulus  from  the  peripheric  ending  of  a  nerve  to  its  central 
ending  in  the  brain ;  and  when  the  stimulus  has  arrived  at  the 
brain,  a  certain  lapse  of  time,  about  one-tenth  of  a  second,  takes 
place  before  the  will  is  able  to  transmit  the  message  to  the 
nerves  of  the  muscle  so  as  to  produce  motion.  This  time-rate 
of  conduction  varies  in  different  persons,  and  at  different  periods 
in  the  same  person,  according  to  the  degree  of  attention ;  if  the 
attention  be  slight,  the  period  is  longer  and  less  regular,  but  if 
the  attention  be  active,  then  the  period  is  very  regular.  But, 
whether  the  attention  be  great  or  little,  a  certain  time  must 
elapse  from  the  moment  of  irritation  of  a  sensory  nerve  to  the 
resultant  contraction  of  muscle  ;  and  a  message  from  the  great 
toe  to  the  brain  will  take  an  appreciably  longer  time  than  a 
message  from  the  ear  or  face.  The  time-rate  of  propagation, 
again,  is  greatly  dependent  upon  the  temperature  of  the  nerve ; 
cold  very  much  diminishes  it,  so  that  the  speed  may  be  ten 
times  less  in  a  cold  than  in  a  normal  nerve ;  and  in  a  cold- 
blooded animal,  like  the  frog,  the  rate  is  only  about  80  feet 
in  a  second,  while  in  man  it  is  about  180  feet  in  the  second. 
It  was  Haller  who  first  proposed  to  measure  this  speed  of 
nervous  action,  and  he  made  a  calculation  of  it  in  man,  which 
was  not  very  far  from  the  truth ;  but  after  him  no  one  seems  to 
have  attempted  the  task,  and  Miiller  even  pronounced  it  impos- 
sible, because  the  time  seemed  infinitely  little  and  unmeasur- 
able.  In  experiments  on  frogs  poisoned  with  opium  or  nux 
vomica,  he  could  not  perceive  the  slightest  interval  of  time 
between  the  stimulus  applied  and  the  resulting  muscular  con- 
traction. Helmholtz  has  since  shown  in  the  most  brilliant 
manner  that  Miiller  was  mistaken,  and  has,  by  means  of  a  very 
ingenious  and  delicate  mechanism,  measured  the  time  which 
elapsed  between  the  stimulus  applied  and  the  reflex  contraction  : 
he  found,  too,  that  the  stimulus  required  a  much  longer  time 
proportionately  to  pass  through  the*  cells  of  the  spinal  cord  than 
to  pass  along  the  motor  and  sensory  nerves  concerned.  The  rate 
of  conduction  by  nerve  is  then  not  only  measurable,  but  it  is 


ivO  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY. 

comparatively  moderate — less  even  than  the  rate  at  which  sound 
travels.  Instead  of  nervous  action  being  due  to  the  instan- 
taneous passage  of  some  imponderable  or  psychical  principle, 
conduction  by  a  nerve  depends  upon  some  modification  of  its 
molecular  constitution,  for  the  accomplishment  of  which  a 
certain  time  is  essentially  requisite. 

Although  no  such  researches  into  the  cerebral  centres  as  those 
made  into  the  conditions  of  conduction  by  nerve  have  been 
made,  we  may  not  unfairly  apply  the  analogy  to  psychical 
activity.  At  any  rate,  there  can  be  no  question  that  there  is  a 
considerable  variation  in  the  time  in  which  the  same  mental 
functions  are  performed  by  different  individuals,  or  by  the  same 
individual  at  different  times.  Such  variations  may  depend  upon 
original  constitution,  or  they  may  be  due  to  transitory  conditions 
of  the  psychical  centres.  "  There  is,"  says  Locke,  "  a  kind  of 
restiveness  in  almost  every  one's  mind.  Sometimes,  without 
perceiving  the  cause,  it  will  boggle  and  stand  still,  and  one 
cannot  get  it  a  step  forward ;  and  at  another  time  it  will  press 
forward,  and  there  is  no  holding  it  in."  The  oppression  of 
mental  suffering  is  notably  attended  with  great  sluggishness  of 
thought,  the  train  of  ideas  seeming  to  stand  still,  and  even  per- 
ception being  imperfect.  In  some  forms  of  mental  disease  this 
defective  association  is  well  marked,  whilst  in  others  a  certain 
sort  of  association  is  wonderfully  quickened,  so  that  ideas  follow 
one  another  without  restraint,  or  like-sounding  words  are  strung 
together  in  the  most  incoherent  rhymes.  In  many  cases  of 
affection  of  the  brain,  as  in  recovery  from  apoplectic  seizure,  a 
considerable  time  must  elapse  between  a  question  asked  of  the 
patient  and  his  reply :  there  is,  as  it  were,  a  sluggishness  of  the 
mind,  which  perceives  and  reacts  more  slowly  than  natural. 
Such  facts,  proving  beyond  all  question  that  the  rapidity  and 
success  of  mental  processes  are  dependent  upon  the  physical 
condition  of  the  supreme  nervous  centres,  prove  also  that  time 
is  an  essential  element  in  every  mental  function.  The  time-rate 
of  the  function  is  probably  the  measure  of  the  molecular 
activity  which  is  the  condition  of  it. 

But  there  are  yet  more  important  physiological  discoveries, 
which  may  help  us  towards  some  conception  of  the  physical 
conditions  of  mental  activity.  The  researches  of  Matteucci  and 


372  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

Du  Bois  Reymond  into  the  electrical  relations  of  nerve  have 
shown  that  there  are  currents  of  electricity  engendered  in  nerve, 
as  in  other  animal  structures,  which  are  constantly  circulating 
in  it.  When  the  nerve  is  active  there  is  a  diminution  of  its 
proper  current,  and  the  needle  of  a  galvanometer  connected  with 
it  then  exhibits  a  negative  variation.  It  has  been  supposed  by 
Matteucci  that  there  is  a  rapid  succession  of  electric  discharges 
from  nerve  and  muscle  during  activity ;  but,  although  that 
assumption  is  very  doubtful,  and  altogether  ignored  by  Du  Bois 
Eeymond,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  negative  variation  of 
the  needle  of  the  galvanometer  marks  a  decrease  in  the  electro- 
motive force  of  the  nerve,  and  that  this  decrease  is  in  some  way 
"  intimately  related  to  that  molecular  change  in  the  interior  of 
the  nerve,  which,  when  it  reaches  the  muscle,  will  produce  con- 
traction, or  when  it  reaches  the  brain,  will  be  received  as  sensa- 
tion." It  is  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  every  minute  particle  of 
nerve  acts  according  to  the  same  law  as  the  whole  nerve ;  the 
"current,  therefore,  which  a  piece  of  nerve  produces  in  a  circuit 
of  which  it  forms  part,  must  be  considered  only  as  a  derived 
portion  of  incomparably  more  intense  currents  circulating  in  the 
interior  of  the  nerve  around  its  ultimate  particles.  There  is  thus 
certain  evidence,  not  only  of  the  electro-motor  properties  of 
nerve,  but  of  a  modification  of  these  during  functional  activity: 
such  modification  again  testifying  to  an  intimate  change  at  any 
rate  in  the  polar  molecules  of  the  nerve. 

But  there  are  yet  further  considerations.  If  a  constant  gal- 
vanic current  be  passed  through  a  portion  of  nerve,  it  is  found 
that  not  the  tract  of  nerve  only  which  lies  between  the  poles,  but 
an  extra-polar  portion  or  tract  also,  is  put  into  what  is  called  an 
electrotonic  state.  Pfliiger  has,  in  fact,  shown  that  the  nerve 
immediately  falls  into  two  zones,  in  one  of  which,  namely,  at  the 
negative  pole,  the  excitability  of  the  nerve  is  increased ;  in  the 
other,  namely,  at  the  positive  pole,  the  excitability  is  diminished. 
The  former  state  he  has  called  Katelectrotonus — the  latter,  Anelec- 
trotonus.  A  given  tract  of  nerve  is  excited,  therefore,  through  the 
production  of  katelectrotonus  and  the  disappearance  of  auelec- 
trotonus,  but  not  through  the  disappearance  of  katelectrotonus  and 
the  appearance  of  anelectrotonus.  Now,  the  conduction  of  a  sti- 
mulus along  the  nerve  is  found  to  be  delayed  by  the  electrotonic 


iv.]  TEE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  3/3 

condition  of  it  in  the  polarized  tract ;  and  this  delay  passes  to 
complete  stoppage  of  conduction  when  the  electrotonic  condition 
reaches  a  certain  degree,  or  oversteps  it.  The  diminution  of 
conducting  power  takes  place  both  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
negative  pole  and  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  positive  pole ;  so 
that  the  nerve-tract  near  the  positive  pole  of  an  electrotonic 
nerve  is  distinguished  by  a  decrease  of  direct  excitability,  and  by 
retardation  of  the  speed  of  conduction  ;  the  nerve-tract  near  the 
negative  pole,  on  the  other  hand,  undergoes  an  increase  of  direct 
excitability,  and  a  retardation  of  conducting  power.  These 
changes  all  agree  in  increasing  with  the  increasing  strength  of 
the  stream,  with  the  increase  in  the  time  of  its  closure,  and  with 
the  decrease  of  the  distance  of  the  nerve-tracts  concerned  from 
the  poles.  Such  are  the  broad  results  of  Pfliiger's  admirable 
investigations :  what  conclusions  do  they  seem  to  point  to  ? 
Considering  that  the  states  of  excitability  are  of  an  opposite 
kind  at  the  positive  and  negative  poles,  and  considering  further 
the  sort  of  change  which  is  notably  produced  in  soft  conductors 
by  an  electric  stream,  it  is  a  natural  inference  that  the  physical 
and  chemical  changes  of  which  the  retardation  of  conduction  is 
a  result  are  quite  different  at  the  negative  from  what  they  are  at 
the  positive  pole — in  a  certain  regard,  opposite :  between  the 
poles  there  being  a  centre  of  indifference  at  which  one  kind  of 
change  passes  into  the  other.  If  this  be  so,  then  it  is  not  impos- 
sible, perhaps  not  improbable,  that  the  exciting  operation  of  a 
galvanic  stream  through  a  nerve  may  lie  in  the  chemical  effects 
which  the  stream  calls  forth  in  the  soft  conductor  through  which 
it  passes :  the  intrapolar  tract  of  nerve  behaving  in  every  regard 
like  polarized  moist  conductors,  the  qualities  of  which  are  more 
altered  by  the  stream  the  nearer  the  tracts  affected  are  to  the 
two  poles.  The  molecular  process  of  excitation  in  the  nerve,  the 
passage  out  of  the  excitable  into  the  excited  condition,  would 
then  be  the  effect  of  this  electrolysis  ;  and  the  electric  excitation 
would  resolve  itself  into  a  definite  form  of  chemical  stimulus, 
which,  like  the  process  of  giving  off  hydrogen  during  the  closure 
of  a  stream,  appears  only  at  the  negative  pole.  The  analogy  of 
the  process  of  excitation  with  a  product  of  electrolysis  is  not 
weakened  by  the  fact  that  a  certain  time  is  required  by  a  nerve, 
after  it  has  been  in  an  electrotonic  state,  before  it  recovers  its 


374  TEE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

full  power  of  conduction.*  Still  it  would  be  unwarrantable,  in 
the  present  state  of  knowledge,  to  assume  any  such  comparison 
as  exact :  its  use  is  rather  as  an  illustration  from  the  known,  in 
order  to  assist  us  to  some  kind  of  conception  of  the  unknown. 
Chemistry  must  supply  the  groundwork  of  a  physiology  of 
nerve  element,  and  on  its  progress  the  physiologist  must  wait ; 
but  for  the  full  exposition  of  the  complex  phenomena  of  nerve 
function  there  will  be  needed  wider  science  than  chemistry  is 
ever  likely  to  furnish. 

The  results  so  far  obtained  prove  clearly  enough  that  nervous 
function  is  not  to  be  embraced  in  any  metaphysical  conception, 
or  dismissed  as  inexplicable,  but  that  it  is  a  matter  for  positive 
scientific  investigation.  The  conducting  function  of  nerve  is 
shown  to  be  a  measurable  process  of  molecular  movement ;  the 
proper  electrical  current  of  nerve  is  diminished  during  its  ex- 
citation, and  its  intimate  molecular  constitution  modified ;  and 
there  are  grounds  for  supposing  that  the  electric  excitation  of 
nerve  results  from  some  definite  chemical  change.  The  relation 
between  chemical  force  and  electric  force  is  probably  nowhere 
more  intimate  than  in  the  phenomena  of  nervous  action,  could 
we  only  unfold  their  real  nature. 

It  has  been  shown  that  with  nerve  as  with  muscle  the  chemi- 
cal reaction  becomes  acid  after  activity,  owing  to  the  production 
seemingly  of  lactic  acid ;  and  the  results  of  the  waste  through 
activity  of  nerve  element  are  found  to  resemble  very  much 
those  which  are  produced  by  the  waste  of  muscle:  they  are 
such  as  result  from  the  retrograde  metamorphosis  of  the  highly 
vital  tissue,  and  seem  to  fall  under  two  classes,  one  of  which 
represents  the  series  of  fatty  acids,  the  other  that  of  aromatic 
bodies.  These  facts  are  of  interest  in  connexion  with  what  is 
known  of  the  similar  electrical  relations  of  nerve  and  muscle. 
By  means  of  the  thermo-electrical  apparatus  Becquerel  and 
Breschet  have  shown  that  a  muscle  rises  one  degree  in  tern-, 
perature  during  contraction ;  the  production  of  heat  being  due 
to  the  oxidation  which  then  goes  on,  as  the  investigations  of 
Ludwig — proving  that  the  arterial  blood  which  passes  through 
a  muscle  in  a  state  of  contraction  is  almost  completely  deprived 

*  Arnold  von  Bezold,  Untersuclrangen  iiber  die  Electrische  Erregung  der 
Nerven  und  Muskeln.  1861. 


iv.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  3/5 

of  its  oxygen — and  the  nature  of  the  waste  products  of  oxida- 
tion found  in  muscle  after  contraction,  indicate  with  sufficient 
clearness.  During  muscular  contraction,  then,  there  is  not  only 
motion,  but  there  is  an  evolution  of  heat,  together  with  a  mo- 
dification of  the  electrical  currents  of  muscle  and  a  certain 
chemical  action;  and  any  comprehensive  theory  of  muscular 
action  must  be  able  to  show  how  these  are  related  to  each  other. 
The  observations  of  Heidenhain,  so  far  as  they  go,  would  cer- 
tainly indicate  that  the  amount  of  chemical  action  was  in  pro- 
portion to  the  sum  total  of  latent  energy  made  "  actual "  during 
contraction.*  I  am  not  aware  that  like  investigations  have  been 
made  into  the  chemical  history  of  nerve  during  the  exercise 
of  function;  but  one  may  fairly  assume,  both  from  the  like 
electrical  properties  and  from  the  bike  products  of  the  retrograde 
metamorphosis,  that  an  absorption  of  oxygen  and  an  evolution 
of  heat  are  part  of  an  undoubted  chemical  action.  Again,  then, 
the  appeal  is  to  the  chemist  to  make  known  the  nature  of  the 
intimate  chemical  changes. 

I  have  adduced  the  foregoing  physiological  considerations  to 
the  end  that  they  may  furnish  the  groundwork  of  a  just  concep- 
tion of  the  pathological  phenomena :  they  are  valuable  not  so 
much  for  what  they  actually  reveal  as  for  what  they  point  to ; 
and  they  are  certainly  indispensable  to  the  formation  of  a  con- 
sistent theory  capable  of  binding  together  the  many  scattered 
facts  in  nerve  pathology  at  present  known,  and  for  directing 
the  course  of  future  research.  At  the  outset  they  prove  that, 
so  far  from  its  being  wonderful  that  there  are  no  visible  morbid 
appearances  in  some  cases  of  insanity,  the  wonder  really  is  that 
such  should  have  been  expected.  It  has  been  calculated  that 
a  distinct  sensation  of  smell  is  produced  by  30ooo  gr.  of  sul- 
phuretted hydrogen,  by  ±0000  gr.  of  bromine,  by  iao500o-  gr- 
of  oil  of  resin,  and  by  even  a  still  smaller  quantity  of  musk ; 
and  yet  men  familiar  with  these  facts  have  thought  it  no  incon- 
sistency to  look  with  the  naked  eye  for  the  physical  condition 
of  delicate  psychical  disorder. 

2.    Individuality  of  Nerve  Element. — Not  only  have  the 
electrical  properties  of  nerve  element  and  the  intimate  che- 

•  Mechanische  Leistung.  "Wanneentwickelung  und  Stoffumsatz  bei  der  Muskel- 
thatigkeit,  von  Rudolf  Heidenhain. 


376  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

mical  changes  during  its  function  been  hitherto  entirely  disre- 
garded by  those  who  have  written  on  the  pathology  of  insanity, 
but  it  would  be  no  injustice  to  assert  that  nerve  element 
itself,  as  a  living  entity,  has  been  almost  ignored.  The  main 
stress  has  always  been  laid  upon  the  blood-vessels,  as  if  they 
were  the  primary  agents  in  initiating  and  keeping  up  cerebral 
disorder.  But  the  truth  is  that  the  first  step  in  insanity  often 
is,  as  it  is  in  inflammation,  a  direct  change  in  the  individual 
elements  of  the  tissue,  the  change  in  the  blood-vessels  being 
entirely  secondary.  Take,  for  illustration,  the  early  steps  of 
inflammation  :  by  the  interesting  observations  of  Professor  Lister 
it  has  been  made  evident  that,  in  the  case  of  mechanical  or 
chemical  injury  to  some  part,  the  elements  of  the  tissue  are 
directly  injured  ;  that  they  are  brought  to  a  lower  state  of  life, 
and  their  functional  activity  impaired ;  as  a  consequence  of  the 
injury  the  elements  are  brought  nearer  to  the  condition  of  ordi- 
nary non-living  matter,  and  the  corpuscles  of  the  blood  exhibit 
a  tendency  to  stick  together  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  dam- 
aged part,  just  as  they  do  when  brought  into  contact  with 
ordinary  matter  after  being  withdrawn  from  the  body.  The 
dilatation  of  the  vessels  is  produced  indirectly  through  the 
nervous  system.  Observation  of  the  effects  of  irritants  upon 
the  pigment-cells  of  the  frog's  skin  confirmed  these  views :  Mr. 
Lister  found  that  irritants  applied  in  such  a  mild  form  as  to 
cause  little  or  no  derangement  of  the  blood  did  nevertheless 
produce  a  certain  degree  of  loss  of  power  in  the  part  to  which 
they  were  applied ;  for  there  took  place  a  diffusion  of  the  pig- 
ment in  the  cells — "the  visible  evidence  of  diminished  func- 
tional activity  accompanying,  if  not  preceding,  the  earliest 
approaches  to  inflammatory  congestion,"  and  corresponding  with 
arterial  dilatation.  Experiments  with  carbonic  acid  proved  that 
it  had  a  powerful  sedative  effect  upon  the  tissues,  paralysing 
their  vital  energies  so  as  to  give  rise  to  intense  inflammatory 
congestion,  which,  however,  was  transient ;  even  in  amputated 
limbs,  in  which  there  was  of  course  no  circulation,  the  tissues 
recovered  after  its  action,  so  that,  as  the  restoration  of  the 
action  of  cilia  separated  from  the  body  might  indicate,  the 
"  tissues  possess,  independently  of  the  central  organ  of  the 
nervous  system  or  of  the  circulation,  or  even  of  the  presence 


IV.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  IS  SANITY. 

of  blood  within  the  vessels,  an  intrinsic  power  of  recovery 
from  irritation,  when  it  has  not  been  carried  beyond  a  certain 
point."  *  From  which  researches  it  plainly  appears  that  the 
earliest  condition  of  inflammation  is  a  more  or  less  complete 
suspension  of  functional  activity  in  the  elements  of  the  tissue, 
whatever  be  the  cause  ;  and  it  is  evident  also  that  the  walls 
of  the  blood-vessels  are  more  or  less  deprived  of  their  vital 
endowments  when  inflammation  is  established,  as  they  then  allow 
fibrme  to  pass  readily  through,  though  they  repel  it  in  health. 
These  experimental  results  definitely  establish  the  correctness  of 
views  long  maintained  by  those  philosophical  pathologists  who 
gave  due  weight  to  such  phenomena  as  the  immediate  effects 
of  mechanical  and  chemical  injury  of  a  part,  the  growth  of 
blood-vessels  in  the  primordial  development  of  parts,  and 
the  increased  action  of  one  kidney  and  the  sequent  in- 
creased afflux  of  blood  when  the  other  is  destroyed  or  rendered 
incompetent.f 

Bearing  well  in  mind  the  foregoing  observations  touching  the 
direct  action  of  the  tissues,  it  will  not  be  difficult  to  perceive 
how  damage  to  the  nerve  elements  of  the  brain,  however 
caused — whether  from  overwork,  or  emotional  anxiety,  or  some 
poison  in  the  blood,  or  direct  injury — may  immediately  declare 
itself  in  disordered  function :  the  nerve  element  is  brought  to 
a  lower  state  of  life,  and  manifests  its  deviation  from  the  normal 
state  in  a  disturbance  of  function.  And  as  in  inflammation  a 
determination  of  blood  and  an  adhesion  of  its  corpuscles  follow 
the  local  mischief,  so  here  a  disturbance  of  the  circulation  inevi- 
tably follows,  and  in  its  turn  becomes  the  cause  of  further 
mischief.  One  may  perhaps  perceive  also  how  it  is  that  when 
there  is  an  innate  feebleness  of  nerve  element  in  consequence 
of  hereditary  taint  insanity  is  produced  by  causes  that  would 
have  no  such  baneful  effect  upon  a  soundly  constituted  brain. 

The  knowledge  now  acquired  of  the  state  of  the  cerebral 
circulation  during  sleep  goes  to  prove  the  importance  of  the 
nerve  element  as  individual.  It  has  for  long  been  the 
fashion  to  assert,  that  there  was  an  increased  quantity  of 

»  On  the  Early  Stages  of  Inflammation,  by  J.  Lister,  F.R.S.     Philosophical 
Transactions,  vol.  xxxi.,  1858. 
t  General  Pathology,  by  J.  Simon,  F.R.S. 


378  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY,  [CHAP. 

blood  in  the  brain  during  natural  sleep,  notwithstanding  that 
Blumenbach  had  noticed  in  the  trepanned  skull  of  a  man  that 
the  brain  sank  during  sleep,  and  swelled  up  with  blood  when  he 
awakened ;  but  the  investigations  of  Mr.  Durham,  who  removed 
portions  of  the  skull  in  different  animals,  have  distinctly  shown 
that  there  is  considerably  less  blood  in  the  brain  during  sleep, 
its  substance  then  becoming  paler  and  sinking  down,  while  it 
immediately  swells  up  and  becomes  turgid  with  blood  when 
the  animal  awakes.*  If,  mindful  of  the  ancient  maxim,  ubi 
stimulus  ibi  fluxus,  we  fix  attention  on  the  individual  nerve 
element  as  the  active  cause  to  which  the  supply  of  blood  is  to 
some  extent  secondary,  it  will  be  seen  why  the  quantity  of  blood 
is  diminished  in  the  brain  during  sleep.  The  actively  flowing 
stream  ministers  to  the  functional  energy  of  the  cerebral  centres ; 
but,  as  such  function  implies  a  waste  of  organic  element,  there 
must  needs  be  a  period  of  suspension  of  activity,  during  which 
renovation  may  take  place.  The  function  of  the  brain,  therefore, 
as  an  organ  of  animal  life,  is  suspended  by  recurring  periods  of 
sleep :  the  organic  life  of  the  brain,  however,  like  organic  life 
elsewhere,  does  not  sleep,  but,  by  the  restoration  of  the  wasted 
or  exhausted  element,  lays  up  a  store  of  latent  energy  to  be 
made  "actual"  in  future  function.  The  supply  of  blood  answers 
to  these  different  states,  being  active  when  the  energy  is  great, 
moderate  when  it  is  in  abeyance.  If  the  thoughts  of  any  one 
wishing  to  go  to  sleep  are  active,  there  is  a  rapid  flow  of  blood 
through  the  brain,  and  he  cannot  get  to  sleep ;  the  stimulus  of 
activity  acts  as  a  cause  of  the  determination  of  blood,  and  this 
in  its  turn  tends  to  keep  up  the  activity.  Some  men  under  these 
circumstances  have  a  certain  power  of  inducing  sleep  in  spite  of 
the  difficulty :  by  concentrating  the  attention  on  some  particular 
mental  representation,  and  steadily  checking  every  tendency  to 
revert  to  the  exciting  ideas,  the  excitation  of  the  nervous  centres 
ministering  to  these  subsides,  the  circulation  becomes  less  active, 
and  the  individual  passes  into  sleep,  though  it  is  probably  not 
very  sound.  Indeed,  it  were  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  there 
exists  the  greatest  variety  with  regard  to  the  extent  and  degree 

*  Guy's  Hospital  Reports.  Dr.  Hammond,  in  an  article  on  "Sleep  and  In- 
somnia," in  the  New  York  Medical  Journal,  voL  L  1865,  confirms  Mr.  Durham's 
experiments,  and  gives  the  observations  of  previous  authors. 


iv.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  379 

of  sleep,  one  sense  being  sometimes  more  deeply  involved  than 
another,  or  the  same  sense  differently  at  different  times.  All 
that  we  are  directly  concerned  with  here,  however,  is  the  con- 
firmation which  the  phenomena  of  sleep  afford  of  what  has  been 
said  of  the  primary  action  of  nerve  element  as  individual. 

If  it  were  desirable  to  multiply  arguments  in  favour  of  the 
foregoing  views  of  the  relation  of  the  nerve  element  to  the  cir- 
culation, one  might  instance  the  effects  of  its  direct  and  rapid 
exhaustion.  By  putting  any  one,  for  example,  on  the  rack, 
mentally  or  bodily,  it  is  possible  to  produce  as  great  nervous 
exhaustion  in  one  hour  as  would  be  ordinarily  produced  by  a 
day  of  vigorous  activity ;  the  result  whereof  notably  is  irresis- 
tible sleep.  A  man  will  sleep  on  the  rack  in  the  intervals  of  the 
application  of-  the  torture.  Carry  the  exhaustion  still  further, 
the  power  of  recovery  in  nerve  element  which,  as  in  all  organic 
element,  is  an  intrinsic  property,  is  abolished,  and  the  sleep  that 
occurs  is  the  sleep  from  which  there  is  no  waking — the  sleep 
that  rounds  off  the  dream  of  life. 

"When  a  dog  is  poisoned  with  strychnia,  it  may  happen  that 
there  are  no  appreciable  morbid  appearances  in  the  animal's 
body ;  but  if  there  are  any,  they  are  such  as  congestion  of  the 
spinal  cord,  aneurismal  dilatation  of  the  capillaries,  and  perhaps 
small  effusions  of  blood  in  the  grey  matter.  Now  the  congestion 
or  effusion  of  blood  in  such  case  is  plainly  a  secondary  result 
of  the  intensely  morbid  activity  of  the  nerve  elements  upon 
which  the  strychnia  directly  acts.  Here,  in  fact,  is  the  abstract 
and  brief  chronicle  of  what  happens  in  many  cases  of  insanity. 
Transfer  the  convulsive  action  from  the  spinal  nerve-cells  to  the 
cortical  cells  of  the  hemispheres,  the  result  is  an  acute  and  violent 
mania,  in  which  the  furious  morbid  action  of  the  directly  poisoned 
nervous  centres  initiates  an  acute  determination  of  blood.  Let 
the  disease  be  supposed  to  become  chronic,  the  congestion  of  the 
blood-vessels  may  become  chronic  also.  The  common  error  has 
been  to  discover  the  pathological  cause  of  the  insanity  in  the 
congestion,  in  spite  of  the  observation  that  it  was  not  the  way  of 
congestion,  otherwise  caused,  to  give  rise  to  insanity.  In  what 
is  described  as  Mania  transitofia,  it  sometimes  happens  that  an 
individual  falls  with  great  suddenness  into  a  violent  fury,  in 
which  perhaps  he  evinces  dangerous,  destructive,  and  even 


380  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

homicidal  tendencies  :  his  face  is  flushed,  his  head  hot,  and  there 
is  plainly  an  active  determination  of  blood  to  the  brain.  After 
a  short  time  the  attack  subsides,  and  the  man  is  himself  again, 
scarcely  conscious  of  what  has  happened.  There  is  no  good  reason 
to  look  upon  the  rush  of  blood  in  such  case  as  the  active  agent 
in  the  production  of  the  fury :  but  there  is  the  strongest  possible 
reason  to  believe  it  secondary  to  the  violent  and  degenerate 
action  of  the  nerve  centres;  the  attack  is,  in  .truth,  an  epilepsy 
of  the  cerebral  centres,  and  the  congestion  takes  place  not  other- 
wise than  as  it  takes  place  in  the  spinal  cord  poisoned  with 
strychnia.  To  the  formation  of  correct  views  of  the  pathology 
of  insanity  it  is  most  necessary  that  this  order  of  events  should 
be  distinctly  realized 

At  the  same  tinje  it  is  important  not  to  overlook  the  fact  that 
extraneous  disturbances  in  the  circulation,  quantitative  or  quali- 
tative, may  be  the  direct  cause  of  disorder  of  the  cerebral  centres. 
Whatever  interferes  with  the  regular  supply  of  the  proper  ma- 
terial to  be  by  them  assimilated,  and  the  regular  removal  of  the 
waste  products  of  functional  action,  so  far  predisposes  to  disease, 
and  will  specially  do  so  where  there  is  any  innate  disposition  to 
morbid  action  or  any  prostration,  otherwise  caused,  of  nerve 
element.  In  his  Lumleian  Lectures,  Dr.  Todd  much  insisted 
upon  what  Andral  had  pointed  out,  namely — that  an  anaemic 
condition  is  favourable  to  the  production  of  delirium  and  of 
coma ;  at  the  end  of  acute  specific  diseases,  when  the  fever  is 
over,  a  delirium  lasting  for  a  few  days  sometimes  occurs,  which 
some  attribute  to  acute  cerebral  anaemia,  great  nervous  exhaus- 
tion probably  combining.  The  degenerate  delirious  activity  of 
the  nervous  centres  is  the  evidence  of  an  exhaustion  which, 
carried  a  little  further,  becomes  coma,  or  extinction  of  functional 
action.  That  congestion  or  inflammation  of  the  brain  may 
produce  serious  disturbance  of  its  functions  is  known  to 
every  one  ;  but  it  is  well  worth  considering  how  rarely  conges- 
tion of  the  brain,  originating  in  causes  outside  itself,  gives  rise 
to  delirium  or  insanity.  It  is  because  of  a  diminution  in  the 
functional  power  of  the  nerve  element  itself,  because  this  has 
been  brought  to  a  stage  nearer  to  the  condition  of  non-living 
matter,  that  the  adherence  of  the  blood-corpuscles  and  the  stag- 
nation of  the  blood  takes  place  ;  and  under  such  circumstances 


IV.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  381 

we  may  understand  how  little  fitted  the  nervous  element  is  to 
contend  with  the  difficulties  that  are  gathered  around  it.  It  is 
weak,  and  it  is  consequently  miserable  ;  evils  cluster  around  it, 
and  threaten  to  quench  its  life  ;  it  has  more  difficult  work  to  do, 
and  yet  it  is  less  able  to  do  it ;  it  responds,  therefore,  as  weak- 
ness always  does,  with  a  convulsive  or  delirious  energy,  and.  if 
circumstances  continue  very  unfavourable,  its  activity  is  extin- 
guished. May  we  not,  then,  perceive  how  it  is  that  the  abstrac- 
tion of  blood  by  some  means  from  the  labouring  part  may  be 
beneficial  in  certain  cases?  The  aim  is  to  put  the  suffering 
part  as  nearly  as  possible  in  that  condition  in  which  it  is  during 
natural  sleep — in  a  condition  of  rest ;  and  the  recovering  power 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  exists  in  the  elements  of  a  tissue,  will 
then  be  under  the  most  favourable  conditions  for  restoring  the 
natural  state  of  things.* 

One  more  consideration  shall  serve  to  exemplify  the  impor- 
tance of  the  individual  nerve  element  in  the  production  of 
insanity.  To  surgeons  it  is  well  known  that  after  an  injury  ery- 
sipelas and  phlebitis,  which  are  blood-diseases,  are  most  apt  to 
appear  at  the  seat  of  the  injury.  And  a  true  eruptive  fever  will 
do  the  same-  Mr.  Paget  relates,  for  example,  how  he  cut  a  boy  for 
the  stone,  who  became  very  ill,  and  seemed  in  danger  of  his  life  ; 
but  soon  a  vivid  red  eruption  appeared  at  and  about  the  wound. 
This  was  measles,  earliest  and  most  intense  at  the  seat  of  the 
injury,  just  as  erysipelas  might  have  been.  He  has  seen  a  similar 
event  in  a  case  of  injured  and  inflamed  knee  with  scarlet  fever, 
and  Dr.  William  Budd  has  recorded  a  case  of  small-pox  which 
appeared  most  intensely  over  a  bruise  of  the  nates.  In  like 
manner,  the  nerve  element,  when  weak  by  nature,  or  weakened 
by  accident,  is  liable  to  be  seized  on  by  a  morbid  poison  :  it  is 
the  weak  part,  and  therefore  the  sufferer.  But  more  than  that : 
the  greatest  stress  has  been  laid,  throughout  this  work,  on  the 

*  Morel  mentions  the  case  of  a  man,  aged  55,  who  was  hemiplegic  after 
cerebral  haemorrhage.  His  intelligence  was  sound,  but  he  was  morose  and 
irritable,  and  weary  of  life.  Periodically,  however,  he  was  subject  to  attacks, 
in  which  he  complained  of  Hood  rising  to  the  head ;  his  heart  heal  violently ; 
the  fingers  of  the  paralysed  side  contracted;  he  was  unspeakably  dejected  at 
first,  saying  that  he  was  lost ;  then  became  furious,  threw  himself  on  his  wife  or 
children,  and  several  times  attempted  suicide.  Blood-letting  and  cold  to  the 
head  produced  immediate  calm.— Traite  des  Maladws  Mentales,  p.  138. 


382  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

fact  that  traces  or  residua  of  every  mental  act  are  left  behind  by 
it,  modifying  henceforth  the  nature  of  the  element  which  sub- 
served the  particular  function  ;  and  indications  were  given  that 
every  organic  element,  and  not  that  of  the  brain  only,  manifested 
this  kind  of  memory.  Hence  it  comes  to  pass  that  any  tissue 
which  has  been  subject  to  a  particular  morbid  action  is  more 
liable  to  take  on  that  kind  of  action  again, — has,  in  fact,  a  sort  of 
acquired  disposition  to  it.  Now  this  is  most  true  of  the  brain, 
for  the  ixjsidua  left  behind  by  previous  acts  constitute  almost 
the  very  nature  of  the  elements  subserving  mental  action.  The 
weighty  bearing,  therefore,  which  previous  habitual  mental  states 
have  in  the  production  of  insanity,  is  revealed  in  this  law  not 
less  surely  than  the  predisposition  to  a  second  attack  of  in- 
sanity which  a  former  attack  induces.  The  event  in  each  case 
is  an  illustration  of  a  law  of  organic  growth  and  action  to 
which  nervous  element  is  subject  in  common  with  other  or- 
ganic elements  of  the  body.  Plainly,  only  by  fixing  attention 
on  the  individual  nerve  element  can  the  shadow  of  a  concep- 
tion be  formed  of  the  manner  of  the  degeneration  which  reveals 
itself  in  insanity. 

3.  Reflex  Pathological  Action  or  Pathological  Sympathy. — In 
discussing  the  causation  of  insanity,  the  general  features  of  this 
kind  of  morbid  action  have  been  set  forth  ;  and  when  I  come  to 
enumerate  the  morbid  appearances  met  with  in  the  bodies  of  the 
insane,  the  statement  of  the  relative  frequency  of  disease  of 
different  organs  will  find  its  proper  place.  Here  I  take  occasion 
only  to  adduce  certain  observations  with  regard  to  the  striking 
manner  in  which  diseased  action  of  one  nervous  centre  is  some- 
times suddenly  transferred  to  another.  The  fact,  which  has  lately 
attracted  new  attention,  was  long  since  noticed  and  commented 
on  by  Dr.  Darwin : — "  In  some  convulsive  diseases,"  he  writes, 
"  a  delirium  or  insanity  supervenes,  and  the  convulsions  cease ; 
and,  conversely,  the  convulsions  shall  supervene,  and  the  deli- 
rium cease.  Of  this  I  have  been  a  witness  many  times  a  day  in 
the  paroxysms  of  violent  epileptics ;  which  evinces  that  one  kind 
of  delirium  is  a  convulsion  of  the  organs  of  sense,  and  that  our 
ideas  are  the  motions  of  these  organs."  Miss  G.,  one  of  his 
patients,  a  fair  young  lady,  with  light  eyes  and  hair,  was  seized 
with  most  violent  convulsions  of  her  limbs,  with  outrageous  hie- 


iv.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  333 

cough,  and  most  vehement  efforts  to  vomit.  After  nearly  an  hour 
was  elapsed  this  tragedy  ceased,  and  a  calm,  talkative  delirium 
supervened  for  about  another  hour,  and  these  relieved  each  other 
at  intervals  during  the  greatest  part  of  three  or  four  days.  "After 
having  carefully  considered  this  disease,"  he  says,  "  I  thought  the 
convulsions  of  her  ideas  less  dangerous  than  those  of  her  muscles," 
and  thereupon  he  adopted  such  treatment  as  resulted  in  the 
young  lady's  recovery.  In  another  case,  which  came  under  his 
observation,  "  these  periods  of  convulsions,  first  of  the  muscles 
and  then  of  the  ideas,  returned  twice  a  day  for  several  weeks." 
"  Mrs.  C.,"  again,  "  was  seized  every  day,  about  the  same  hour, 
with  violent  pains  in  the  right  side  of-  her  bowels,  about  the 
situation  of  the  lower  edge  of  the  liver,  without  fever,  which 
increased  for  an  hour  or  two,  till  it  became  totally  intolerable. 
After  violent  screaming  she  fell  into  convulsions,  which  termi- 
nated sometimes  in  fainting,  with  or  without  stertor,  as  in  com- 
mon epilepsy ;  at  other  times  a  temporary  insanity  supervened, 
which  continued  about  half  an  hour,  and  the  fit  ceased."*  I 
quote  these  observations  of  Dr.  Darwin  with  great  satisfaction, 
because  they  have  reference  to  what  has  only  lately  received  due 
attention,  and  because  they  are  examples  of  enlightened  obser- 
vation such  as  lie  scattered  through  his  great  work.  Indeed,  a 
candid  inquirer  cannot  but  allow  that  the  sagacious  views  of 
Dr.  Darwin  and  Dr.  "Whytt,  with  regard  to  the  reflex  or  sympa- 
thetic action  of  the  nervous  system  in  disease,  would  add  some- 
thing of  value  to  the  more  exact  knowledge  of  the  subject  which 
exists  at  the  present  day. 

When  treating  of  the  insanity  of  early  life,  it  was  pointed  out 
how  commonly  the  morbid  action  of  the  different  nervous 
centres  were  intermixed,  or  replaced  each  other :  it  is,  in  fact,  in 
early  life  that  this  indistinguishable  blending  of  nervous  dis- 
eases, which  afterwards  become  distinct,  is  most  evident.  Still, 
marked  examples  do  now  and  then  occur  in  the  adult ;  and  it  is 

*  Zoonomia,  vol.  i.  pp.  25,  26.  Brodie  relates  the  case  of  a  lady  who  suffered 
for  a  year  from  persistent  spasmodic  contraction  of  the  sterno-cleido-mastoid  ; 
suddenly  it  ceased,  and  she  fell  into  a  melancholy ;  this  lasted  a  year  ;  after 
which  she  recovered  mentally,  but  the  cramp  of  the  muscle  returned,  and 
lasted  for  many  years.  In  another  case  of  his,  a  neuralgic  condition  of 
the  vertebral  column  alternated  with  true  insanity.— Lect.  on  certain  Local 
Nervous  Affections. 


384  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

not  an  uncommon  thing  for  the  practical  physician,  watching 
the  phenomena  of  actual  disease  of  the  nervous  system,  to  have 
to  admit  the  existence  of  strangely  hybrid  forms.  The  most 
interesting  example,  perhaps,  of  the  transference  of  morbid 
action,  or  of  the  morbid  action  of  one  nervous  centre  being 
vicarious  of  that  of  another,  is  presented  sometimes  in  the  course 
of  epilepsy.  Instead  of  the  usual  attack  of  the  peculiar  convul- 
sions, there  is  a  sudden  maniacal  fury,  which  has  been  described 
in  France  as  epilepsie  larvae — latent  or  masked  epilepsy.  A 
young  surgeon,  strong  and  well-made,  came  under  my  care  in  a 
violent  state  of  maniacal  delirium.  He  had  served  during  the 
Crimean  war,  and  on  his  return  had  entered  into  partnership, 
and  become  engaged  to  a  relative  of  his  partner.  Anxious  on 
this  account,  and  for  pecuniary  reasons,  he  had  not  been  as 
temperate  as  he  should  have  been ;  and  he  had  had  two  epileptic 
fits  at  a  considerable  interval  one  from  the  other.  On  his 
return  one  day  from  seeing  his  patients,  he  complained  of  a  pain 
in  his  back,  and  of  a  feeling  of  cold,  and  talked  flightily.  Next 
morning  he  appeared  well,  and  was  very  anxious  to  know  what 
he  had  said  on  the  previous  evening ;  but  in  the  course  of  the 
day  he  became  wildly  maniacal,  extremely  incoherent,  and  very 
violent.  So  he  remained  for  two  days,  when  he  was  brought  to 
the  hospital  in  a  strait-waistcoat.  After  admission  he  was 
quiet 'but  confused,  and  seemed  quite  unaware  of  what  position 
he  was  in ;  in  the  afternoon  he  <slept  for  three  hours — his  sleep 
deep  almost  stertorous.  On  awaking  he  had  three  very  severe 
epileptic  fits  in  quick  succession,  after  which  a  long  period  of 
comatose  unconsciousness  followed.  On  the  next  day  he  was 
quite  composed  and  rational,  but  very  weary ;  on  the  day  after 
another  acute  attack  of  maniacal  delirium  occurred,  from  which, 
after  a  free  purge,  he  recovered,  without  any  other  epileptic  fit. 
In  this  case  we  may,  I  think,  fairly  believe  that  there  was  a  true 
epileptic  insanity  taking  the  place  of  epileptic  convulsions. 

But  there  are  cases,  as  M.  Morel  has  pointed  out,  in  which 
an  epileptiform  neurosis  exists  for  a  long  period  in  an  unde- 
veloped or  masked  form,  and  gives  rise  to  a  variety  of  madness 
which  is  differently  described  as  maniacal  fury,  or  periodic 
mania,  or  instinctive  mania,  homicidal  or  suicidal,  or  moral 
insanity.  In  such  cases,  after  some  months,  or  even  years, 


iv.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  335 

distinct  epileptic  attacks  make  their  appearance,  and  supply  the 
interpretation  of  the  previously  obscure  insanity. 

It  is  a  characteristic  of  the  nervous  system,  a  property  by 
which  its  internuncial  function  is  accomplished,  that  the  influ- 
ence of  an  impression  made  at  one  spot  is  quickly  communicated 
to  a  more  distant  part.  How  this  takes  place  we  know  not; 
and,  therefore,  it  matters  not  much  whether  we  ascribe  it  to  a 
sympathy  or  consent  of  parts,  or  to  an  induction,  or  an  infection, 
or  to  a  reflex  action,  or  connote  it  by  any  other  term  which,  like 
an  algebraic  symbol,  may  serve  to  express  an  unknown  quan- 
tity. It  is  utterly  impossible  to  account  for  its  operation  in 
disease,  at  one  time  and  not  at  another :  "  Thus,  what  reason," 
asks  Dr.  Whytt,  "  can  be  given  why  sometimes,  after  cutting  off 
an  arm  or  leg,  those  muscles  which  raise  the  lower  jaw  should 
be  affected  with  a  spasm,  rather  than  other  muscles  ?"  There  is 
nothing  very  singular,  however,  in  this  ignorance ;  no  one  knows 
how  it  is  that  the  irritation  extends  from  the  stimulated  spot  of 
a  sensitive  plant,  the  Mimosa  pudica  for  example,  so  that  the 
whole  leaf  contracts,  and  perhaps  neighbouring  leaves  also  con- 
tract; no  one  knows  how  the  induction  of  electricity  actually 
takes  place,  nor  how  it  is  that,  when  a  point  in  a  muscle  is 
stimulated,  the  contraction  extends  along  the  fibre,  nor  how 
the  interior  of  a  nerve  is  actually  altered  when  it  is  put  into  an 
electrotonic  condition.  It  is  none  the  less  certain  that  important 
molecular  modifications  do  take  place  in  those  inner  recesses  of 
nature  that  are  impenetrable  to  our  senses,  and  that  they  declare 
their  insensible  motions  in  sensible  results.  There  is  some 
reason  to  hope,  however,  that  further  researches  into  the  elec- 
trical relations  of  nerve  may  throw  light  upon  these  phenomena 
of  sympathetic  or  reflex  morbid  action.  Call  to  mind  for  a 
moment  what  is  the  state  of  a  nerve  during  excitation.  {There 
is  then  a  molecular  change  of  its  interior,  and  the  proper  elec- 
trical currents  are  diminished,  while  chemical  action  of  some 
kind  takes  place :  this  happening  in  the  interior  of  a  gland, 
must  needs  modify  its  invisible  molecular  processes,  and  the 
modification  may  finally  be  expressed  in  a  palpable  change 
in  the  secretion ;  in  the  interior  of  a  muscle  the  modified  mole- 
cular activity  induced  will  iss.ue  in  a  manifest  contraction; 
in  a  sensorial  centre  the  modification  will  declare  itself  in  a 
26 


386  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

sensation ;  and  if  the  molecular  agitation,  or  whatever  else  we 
call  it,  affect  a  part  which  does  not  secrete,  which  is  not 
sensitive,  which  has  no  power  of  contraction,  it  may  still,  nay, 
it  must,  give  rise  to  some  intimate  nutritive  change.  Sup- 
pose a  morbid  centre  of  irritation  in  some  abdominal  organ, 
with  which  the  brain  is  in  sympathetic  organic  relation,  to  give 
rise  to  persistent  excitation  of  the  intercommunicating  nerve,  it 
is  certainly  not  more  wonderful  that  disturbance  of  cerebral 
activity  should  be  produced,  than  that  reflex  movement  should 
follow  the  stimulation  of  a  centripetal  nerve.  But  disturbance 
of  the  intimate  processes  of  the  supreme  cerebral  functions  is 
neither  more  nor  less  than  disorder  of  the  organized  basis  of 
thought,  the  fabric  of  the  mind.  According  to  the  degree  of 
morbid  derangement  induced,  therefore,  will  there  be  either  a 
disturbance  of  the  mental  tone  and  general  painful  consciousness, 
or  a  positive  perversion  of  ideas  and  an  incoherence  of  thought. 

It  is  most  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  the  different  ways  in 
which  sympathetic  or  reflex  phenomena  may  be  displayed ;  it 
would  appear  that,  wherever  there  is  continuity  of  nerve-struc- 
ture, there  is  the  possible  agency  of  such  action.  It  is  true  that 
the  term,  reflex  action,  is  commonly  used  to  denote  the  trans- 
ference of  excitement  from  a  sensory  to  a  motor  nerve ;  but  there 
is  good  reason  to  think  that  the  reflexion  may  sometimes  take 
place  in  the  opposite  direction — from  the  motor  to  the  sensory 
nerve.  The  severe  pain  felt  along  the  spine  after  sudden  and 
violent  coughing,  or  after  irregular  contraction  of  the  oesophagus, 
the  tickling  in  the  throat  after  long  speaking,  and  the  increase 
of  facial  neuralgia  by  muscular  exertion,  have  been  adduced  as 
examples  of  that  mode  of  transference'.*  These  are  instances  of 
heterogeneous  sympathy,  as  it  has  been  called ;  but  the  sympathy 
may  be  shown  also  by  nerves  of  the  same  kind, — that  is,  it  may 
be  homogeneous  :  pain  in  the  knee  often  indicates  disease  in  the 
hip-joint ;  facial  neuralgia  is  produced  by  toothache ;  or  the  pain 
of  toothache  may  be  felt  in  the  opposite  tooth  to  that  which  is 
carious.  When  one  eye  is  covered,  the  pupil  of  the  other  dilates, 
which  Henle  attributes  to  the  influence  of  the  darkness  diffused 
transversely  from  one  nervous  centre  to  the  other.  Ollivier  has 
related  the  case  of  a  person  whose  left  leg  and  side  had  been 

*  Henle,  Handbuch  der  Rationellen  Pathologic,  1846. 


i^.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  337 

rendered  almost  entirely  insensible  below  the  injury  by  a  wound 
in  the  spinal  cord  of  the  neck ;  still,  when  the  skin  of  this  left 
leg  was  pinched,  the  patient  had  a  sensation  at  the  corresponding 
spot  of  the  opposite  side.  Motion  admits  of  sympathetic  affec- 
tion as  well  as  sensation;  amongst  other  examples,  Henle  quotes 
from  Melchior  the  result  of  cutting  the  internal  rectus  of  the 
eye;  if  this  muscle  be  cut  through  on  one  side,  the  eye  is  a 
little  turned  out ;  if  both  internal  recti  are  cut,  then  both  eyes 
are  strongly  turned  out.  Again,  the  muscles  of  a  paralysed 
limb  in  a  hemiplegic  patient  will  sometimes  contract  durin^ 
some  emotional  or  even  voluntary  act  in  which  symmetrical 
muscles  of  the  opposite  limb  take  part.  Of  diminution  or 
paralysis  of  movement  by  sympathetic  action,  there  are  examples 
in  the  dilatation  of  the  blood-vessels  in  inflammation  and  in 
paraplegia  from  nephritis.  When  mental  emotion  causes  the 
knees  to  shake,  there  is  the  manifestation  of  a  transference  of 
effect  from  one  nervous  centre  to  another,  as  there  is  also  when 
different  impressions  on  the  mind  instantly  give  the  eyes  either 
a  dull,  a  lively,  or  a  fierce  look.  To  these  old  and  familiar 
examples  of  reflex  action  have  now  to  be  added  the  effects  which 
it -is  proved  to  produce  upon  nutrition  and  secretion,  both  by 
direct  action  of  nerve  upon  the  elements  of  the  tissue,  and  indi- 
rectly through  the  blood-vessels. 

After  these  preliminary  general  considerations,  so  necessary 
to  the  just  appreciation  of  the  morbid  appearances  that  are  met 
with  in  insanity,  I  now  proceed  to  the  enumeration  of  the  results 
of  pathological  observation  and  to  the  discussion  of  their  nature. 
In  dealing  with  them  it  will  be  convenient  to  adopt  a  threefold 
division :  1,  of  those  gross  morbid  products  such  as  tumours, 
abscesses,  cysticerci,  &c.  which,  if  they  do  affect  the  hemi- 
spherical cells,  commonly  do  so  indirectly;  2,  those  direct 
results  of  morbid  action  which  are  microscopically  or  otherwise 
discoverable  in  the  structure  of  the  supreme  centres  ;  and  3, 
those  morbid  conditions  of  other  organs  that  have  been  frequently 
met  with  in  the  bodies  of  the  insane. 

1.  Morbid  Products,  such  as  Tumour,  Abscess,  Cysticercus,  &c. — 
"Perhaps  one  of  the  most  frequent  observations  which  one  has  to 
jraake  in  the  case  of  cerebral  abscess  or  tumour,  or  often  in  soften- 
ing, is  the  absence  of  symptoms  of  mental  disturbance.  The  fact 


388  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

may  at  first  seem  striking,  because  the  presence  of  so  much  dis- 
ease might  scarcely  be  thought  compatible  with  the  undisturbed 
function  of  the  brain  as  the  organ  of  the  mind.  After  giving  a 
careful  report  of  ten  cases  of  tumour  of  the  brain,  Dr.  Ogle  calls 
attention  to  the  fact  that  "  in  no  case  was  there  during  life  any- 
thing of  the  nature  of  mental  imbecility,  or  any  symptom  of  the 
various  phases  or  forms  of  insanity."  *  An  examination  of  the 
cases  furnishes  a  sufficient  reason  for  the  non-affection  of  the 
intelligence :  in  none  of  the  ten  was  there  any  recognised  im- 
plication of  the  nervous  centres  of  intelligence  by  the  morbid 
action ;  the  mischief  was  more  or  less  central,  and  the  hemi- 
spherical ganglia  continued  their  functions,  as  they  well  might, 
in  spite  of  it.  If  there  is  one  thing  which  pathological  obser- 
vation plainly  teaches,  it  is  the  slight  irritability  of  the  adult 
brain ;  the  gradual  growth  of  the  tumour  allows  the  brain  to 
accommodate  itself  to  the  new  conditions  ;  and  a  closely  adjacent 
nervous  centre  may  be  entirely  undisturbed  in  function  until  the 
morbid  action  actually  encroaches  upon  it.  Not  disease  in  the 
interior  of  the  brain,  but  disease  of  the  membranes  covering  it, 
is  most  likely  to  produce  disorder  of  the  intelligence ;  because 
in  the  latter  case  the  morbid  action  is  in  close  proximity  to 
the  delicate  centres  of  intelligence,  and  serioiisly  interferes  with 
their  supply  of  blood.  An  observation,  therefore,  which  Dr. 
Ogle  makes  as  the  result  of  an  analysis  of  his  ten  cases  is  not 
without  interest :  it  is  that  in  no  case  was  there  anything  like 
arachnitis  in  connexion  with  the  various  growths.  AYhatever 
be  the  explanation,  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  fact  that  a  large 
tumour  may  exist  in  the  brain,  or  that  a  considerable  amount  of 
the  brain  substance  may  soften  and  undergo  purulent  degene- 
ration— the  pus  even  becoming  incapsuled — without  the  presence 
of  a  single  symptom  to  lead  us  to  suspect  the  existence  of  disease 
in  the  brain,  f  It  has  even  happened  that  a  patient  in  hospital, 
who  has  complained  only  of  general  debility  and  utter  inability 
to  exertion,  has  been  suspected  of  feigning  and  accused  of  in- 
dolence because  there  were  no  marked  symptoms  of  disease, 

*  Journal  of  Mental  Science,  July  1864  :  Cases  of  Primary  Carcinoma  of  the 
Brain. 

t  For  examples  of  extensive  injury  to  the  brain,  without  mental  disturbance, 
see  a  paper  by  Dr.  Ferriar  in  the  first  volume  of  the  Memoirs  of  the  Literary  and 
Philosophical  Society  of  Manchester. 


iv.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  3Q9 

wlien  a  sudden  and  quick  death  has  proved  at  the  same  time  the 
existence  of  an  abscess  of  the  brain  and  the  injustice  done  to  the 
sufferer.* 

Certainly  it  does  sometimes  happen  that  mental  disturbance 
accompanies  disease  in  the  brain,  even  though  the  mischief  is 
quite  central.  Two  things  will  commonly  be  observable  with 
regard  to  the  mental  symptoms  in  such  cases : — (1)  that  they 
are  intermittent,  so  that  they  may  disappear  altogether  for  a 
while ;  and  (2)  that  they  have  the  character  either  of  an  inco- 
herent delirium,  or  of  greater  or  less  mental  imbecility. 

(1.)  The  entire  disappearance  for  a  time  of  all  symptoms  of' 
mental  disorder  plainly  indicates  the  absence  of  any  serious 
organic  structural  change  in  the  nervous  centres  which  directly 
minister  to  the  manifestations  of  mind ;  for,  if  such  change  ex- 
isted, the  recovery  could  not  possibly  be  so  sudden  and  complete. 
The  disturbance  of  the  cortical  cells  is  in  reality  secondary :  it  is 
a  reflex  functional  result  of  the  primary  morbid  action  that  is 
going  on  in  the  neighbourhood ;  and  it  may  consequently  come 
on  suddenly  or  pass  away  suddenly.  This  is  a  far  more  probable 
explanation  of  the  transitory  disorder  than  the  assumption  of  a 
sudden  vascular  congestion,  of  which  there  is  commonly  no  sign, 
and  of  the  absence  of  which  there  are  commonly  many  signs. 
Why  such  reflex  effect  is  produced  in  one  case  and  not  in  another, 
or  why  it  is  not  permanent  when  once  produced,  we  are  no  more 
able  to  say  than  we  are  to  say  why  a  like  eccentric  irritation 
should  in  one  case  give  rise  to  tonic  spasm,  and  in  another  to 
clouic  spasm,  and  in  a  third  to  no  spasm  at  all.  The  complete 
intermission  of  symptoms  does  at  any  rate  strongly  favour  an 
explanation  which  recent  researches  into  the  electric  relations 
of  nerve  render  conceivable. 

(2.)  Not  less  favourable  to  the  interpretation  of  the  mental  dis- 
order as  a  reflex  effect  is  the  character  of  it ;  for  it  is  manifest 
either  in  (a)  great  mental  feebleness  or  imbecility,  deepening 
into  extreme  dementia  in  the  last  stages;  or  (&)  in  delirium. 
That  we  do  not  usually  meet  with  any  of  the  recognised  forms 
of  insanity  is  a  fact  of  some  interest  and  importance  ;  indicating, 
as  it  does,  the  existence  of  different  organic  conditions  from  those 
which  exist  in  cases  of  true  insanity.  A  systematized  mania  or 
*  Ueber  Gebirnabscesse,  von  Prof.  Dr.  Lebert,  Virchow's  Archiv  voL  x.  1856. 


390  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

melancholia  represents  a  certain  organized  result  of  abnormal 
character,  a  definite  morbid  action — the  organization,  if  you  will, 
of  disorder ;  it  marks  the  persistence  of  a  certain  mental  power, 
though  wrongly  directed,  a  certain  co-ordination  of  action,  though 
morbid  action :  the  incoherent  delirium,  or  mental  imbecility, 
with  which  we  have  now  to  do,  indicates,  on  the  other  hand,  a 
general  disturbance  of  the  supreme  centres  of  intelligence,  with- 
out any  systematization  of  the  morbid  action ;  the  delicate  fabric 
of  thought  is  strangely  shattered  by  the  communicated  shock, 
and  the  individual  elements  of  this  noble  organization  of  the 
mind  are  suddenly  prostrated.  Hence,  though  the  delirium  may 
be  very  active,  it  is  commonly  extremely  incoherent,  exhibits  an 
entire  absence  of  co-ordination,  and  is  the  automatic  expression 
of  the  fluttering  action  of  the  ganglionic  cells  of  the  hemispheres 
irritated  into  action  from  without.  So  also  with  regard  to  the 
imbecility,  when  the  mental  disturbance  has  that  form ;  it  is  a 
general  weakness  without  any  definite  character,  wanting  the 
wrecks  of  systematic  delusions  which  are  usually  met  with  in 
the  dementia  following  mania  or  melancholia.  The  want  of 
definite  character,  then,  as  well  as  its  intermittence,  tends  to 
prove  that  there  is  no  definite  morbid  action  going  on  within  the 
supreme  centres  of  consciousness;  that  the  mental  disorder  is, 
like  the  general  epileptiform  convulsions  which  occur  in  local 
diseases  of  the  brain,  not  the  direct  result  of  the  disease,  but  a 
secondary  or  reflex  effect. 

When  the  local  disease  directly  implicates  the  supreme  centres 
of  intelligence,  there  may  be  extreme  mental  disorder,  although 
it  is  remarkable  how  intermittent  the  symptoms  even  then  are 
sometimes.  The  following  example  may  serve  for  illustration  : 
— A  young  man,  set.  24,  suffered  from  frequent  and  severe 
periodic  pains  in  the  head,  weakness  of  vision,  anxiety,  extreme 
feeling  of  debility  and  loss  of  power  in  the  limbs ;  there  was 
also  confusion  of  thought.  After  a  time  he  was  seized  with  a 
maniacal  attack ;  had  hallucinations  of  balls  of  fire  falling  about 
him  ;  thought  himself  pursued  by  monstrous  forms ;  and  was  very 
violent.*  After  an  excitement  of  three  days  and  nights  without 
sleep,  he  fell  into  a  deep  sleep  which  lasted  for  twenty-four  hours, 
and  from  which  he  awoke  quite  conscious,  with  no  remembrance 
of  his  previous  excitement.  Again  after  a  time  headache  came 


IV.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  .      391 

on,  with,  noise  in  the  ears,  and  more  or  less  paralysis  of  the 
voluntary  muscles  ;  the  maniacal  excitement  recurred,  becoming 
more  continuous,  and  the  paralysis  and  mental  stupor  increased. 
One  day  he  could  neither  stand  nor  move  his  arms ;  hut  after  a 
tranquil  night  he  could  do  both  quite  well,  and  could  return 
intelligent  answers  to  questions.  In  the  evening  he  was  again 
restless  and  excited  ;  after  which  he  became  comatose,  and  died. 
Numerous  cysts  of  cysticercus  cellulosus  were  found  in  the  brain, 
five  of  them  being  fixed  to  the  inner  surface  of  the  dura  mater 
and  the  rest  dispersed  throughout  the  grey  matter.  By  far  the 
greater  number  were  found  in  the  grey  layers  of  the  hemispheres, 
being  collected  here  and  there  into  dense  groups.  In  another 
case,  in  which  twelve  cysticerci  were  found  after  death  in  the 
brain,  the  symptoms  were  those  of  gradually  increasing  dementia 
with  paralysis. 

It  is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind,  however,  that  there  may  be 
considerable  disorder  or  destruction  of  a  part  of  the  cortical 
layers  of  the  hemispheres  without  any  mental  suffering.  It  is 
well  known  that  a  person  may  lose  a  part  of  his  brain,  and  yet 
not  exhibit  any  mental  disorder ;  and  portions  of  the  hemispheres 
may  be  cut  away  without  the  patient  feeling  it,  though  he  is 
fully  conscious.  There  are,  in  fact,  great  reasons  to  think  that 
one  hemisphere  may  sometimes  do  the  work  of  the  whole  brain ; 
the  only  consequence  being  an  earlier  exhaustion  by  exercise, 
and,  perhaps,  a  greater  irritability.  This  being  so,  it  is  easy  to 
perceive  how  direct  encroachment  by  disease  on  the  hemi- 
spherical grey  layers  may  in  some  cases  be  unattended  with  any 
mental  disorder. 

2.  Morbid  Appearances  in  the  Brain  and  Membranes. — The 
direct  results  of  morbid  action  in  the  brain,  discoverable  by  the 
microscope  or  otherwise,  certainly  do  not  admit  of  very  de- 
finite description.  Some  are  ready  to  deny  that  the  post-mwtem, 
appearances  in  the  insane  throw  any  bight  on  the  nature  of  the 
disease ;  and  the  belief  affords  a  comfortable  excuse  for  shirking 
laborious  and  tedious  investigation.  Schroeder  van  der  Kolk, 
however,  held  a  different  opinion:  "More  than  thirty  years' 
experience,"  he  says,  "has  led  me  to  an  entirely  opposite 
opinion,  and  I  do  not  remember  to  have  performed,  during  the 
last  twenty-five  years,  the  dissection  of  an  insane  person,  who 


392  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

did  not  afford  a  satisfactory  explanation  of  the  phenomena 
observed  during  life.  On  many  occasions,  I  was  able  accurately 
to  foretell  what  we  should  find."* 

The  broad  result  established  by  pathological  observation 
undoubtedly  is,  that  the  morbid  changes  most  constantly  met 
with  after  insanity  are  such  as  affect  the  surface  of  the  brain, 
and  the  membranes  immediately  covering  it.  Of  these  changes 
there  is  no  need  of  discussion  to  prove  that  those  in  the  layers 
of  the  cortical  substance  are  the  principal  and  essential.  The 
evidence  of  more  or  less  inflammation  of  the  membranes,  and 
especially  a  milky  opacity  of  the  arachnoid,  is  commonly  enough 
met  with  in  the  bodies  of  those  who  have  not  died  insane. 
Certain  observations  of  Schroeder  van  der  Kolk  enable  us  to 
perceive  how  this  may  happen.  In  the  first  place,  he  has 
remarked  that  adjacent  parts  of  different  structure  are  not  readily 
attacked  by  inflammation  in  equal  degree :  the  intercostal  muscles, 
for  example,  are  almost  unaffected  when  acute  costal  pleurisy 
exists  ;  the  muscular  wall  of  the  intestine  is  scarcely  affected  in 
peritonitis  ;  and  the  heart  substance  remains  sound,  notwith- 
standing acute  pericarditis  and  exudation  into  the  pericardium. 
So  it  is  with  the  pia  mater;  congestion,  inflammation,  and 
effusion  may  take  place  in  it,  while  the  brain  itself  is  not 
implicated,  and  exudation  between  the  arachnoid  and  pia  mater 
may  accordingly  be  found  after  death,  when  there  has  been  no 
mental  derangement  during  life.  In  the  second  place,  it  is 
necessary  to  bear  in  mind  the  distribution  of  vessels  in  the  pia 
mater :  Schroeder  van  der  Kolk  found  that,  while  most  of  the 
arteries  pass  down  from  it  into  the  substance  of  the  brain,  and 
are  there  distributed,  the  blood  being  brought  back  to  the 
membrane  by  a  corresponding  series  of  veins,  there  were  in 
addition  direct  channels  of  communication  between  the  arteries 
and  veins  in  the  pia  mater,  f  In  that  arrangement  there  is 
obviously  a  provision  by  which  temporary  disturbance  of  the 
circulation  may  leave  the  cortical  layers  of  the  brain  unaffected, 
the  storm  passing  over  them :  but  for  such  provision,  one  might 
wonder  that  any  one  escaped  serious  mental  disturbance,  con- 
sidering the  frequent  changes  in  the  cerebral  circulation  to  which 

*  On  the  Minute  Structure  and  Functions  of  the  Medulla  Oblongata,  p.  231. 
t  Die  Pathologic  und  Therapie  der  psychischen  Krankheiten. 


iv.j  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  39£ 

every  one  is  subject,  and  the  extreme  sensibility  of  nerve 
element.  As  it  is,  vascular  disturbance  does  not  remain  entirely 
without  effect ;  though  the  hemispheres  are  not  themselves 
sensitive  to  pain,  they  manifest  their  altered  state  by  a  feeling 
of  unusual  irritability  and  a  great  proneness  to  excitement  and 
passion  ;  and  this  is  a  condition  of  things  which,  as  every  one's 
experience  teaches  him,  is  not  so  uncommon,  but  which  mostly 
soon  passes  away  with  the  physical  cause  of  it. 

There  can  be  no  question  that  the  mind  suffers  when  the 
inflammatory  action  in  the  membranes  seriously  implicates  the 
adjacent  cortical  layers ;  for,  without  claiming  acute  meningitis 
in  evidence,  the  morbid  appearances  sometimes  found  after  acute 
insanity  afford  sufficient  proofs.*  In  France  much  attention  has 
been  given  to  the  morbid  conditions  of  acute  maniacal  excite- 
ment or  maniacal  delirium ;  they  are  those  of  acute  hyperseniia 
— namely,  great  injection  of  the  pia  mater  with  spots  of  ecchy- 
mosis,  more  or  less  discoloration  and  softening  of  the  cortical 
layers  —  the  discoloration  being  in  red  streaks  or  stains  with 
spots  of  extravasated  blood,  and  the  softening  being  of  a  violet 
or  pink  hue — and  increase  of  the  puncta  vasculosa  of  the  white 
substance.  As  patients  do  not  commonly  die  suddenly  in  the 
acute  stage  of  insanity,  this  pathological  condition  is  not  often 
met  with  ;  and  it  is  certainly  not  invariably  met  with  when  they 
do  die  in  the  acute  stage.  If  we  call  to  mind  what  has  already 
been  said  of  the  relation  of  nerve  element  to  the  blood-supply, 
it  will  be  easy  to  understand  how  this  may  happen,  as  also  how, 
when  hypersemia  is  met  with,  it  is  properly  to  be  regarded,  not 
as  direct  cause  of  the  mental  disorder,  but,  if  not  as  effect  of  it, 
certainly  as  a  concomitant  effect  of  a  common  cause.  With  due 
regard  to  this  relation,  it  may  on  the  whole  be  justly  said,  that 
the  visible  morbid  appearances  of  acute  insanity  are  those  of  acute 
hypersemia  of  the  brain.  There  are  no  recognisable  differences 
between  the  morbid  conditions  of  acute  mania  and  acute  melan- 
cholia :  in  the  latter  farm  of  disease  it  more  frequently  happens 
that  anatomical  lesions  are  absent ;  and  when  they  are  present, 
they  have  been  said  to  mark  less  hypersemia  than  exists  in  acute 
mania,  and  to  be  attended  with  more  or  less  serous  exudation. 

*  The  case  reported  in  chap.  iii.  p.  347,  may  be  referred  to  for  an  account  of 
instructive  morbid  appearances  in  acute  insanity. 


394  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

The  cases  of  chronic  insanity  in  which  all  anatomical  lesions 
are  wanting  are  rare :  the  longer  the  insanity  has  lasted,  the 
more  evident  they  usually  are.  In  most  instances  there  is  some 
amount  of  thickening  and  opacity  of  the  arachnoid  observable ; 
and  many  of  the  more  advanced  cases  exhibit  some  degree  of 
atrophy  of  the  brain,  especially  of  the  convolutions,  effusion  into 
the  sub-arachnoid  space,  discoloration  of  the  cortical  substance, 
and  general  hardening  of  the  white  substance.  The  pia  mater 
is  sometimes  found  to  be  more  or  less  firmly  and  generally 
adherent  to  the  surface  of  the  brain,  so  that  it  cannot  then  be 
stripped  off  without  tearing  the  latter ;  and  a  finely  granular 
condition  of  the  ependyma  of  the  ventricles,  with  its  frequent 
adherence  to  the  parts  beneath,  would  seem  to  testify  a  previous 
inflammatory  condition  :  the  granulations  of  the  arachnoid,  care- 
fully described  by  Meyer,  have  probably  a  like  interpretation. 
Though  the  adhesion  of  the  pia  mater  to  the  surface  of  the 
brain  is  most  frequently  met  with  in  general  paralysis,  it  is  now 
and  then  witnessed  in  other  forms  of  chronic  insanity,  particu- 
larly in  insanity  after  epilepsy  or  drunkenness. 

The  morbid  changes  which  are  found  most  frequently  in 
general  paralysis,  although  in  rare  cases  they  are  absent,  are 
great  oedema  of  the  membranes,  adhesion  of  the  pia  mater  to  the 
surface  of  the  brain,  greyish-red  local  softening  or  discoloration 
of  the  cortical  layers  and  superficial  induration  thereof,  owing 
to  an  increase  of  the  connective  tissue  and  a  destruction  of  the 
proper  nervous  elements.  More  «r  less  atrophy  of  the  whole 
brain,  particularly,  however,  of  the  convolutions,  is  common,  and 
is  accompanied  with  greater  firmness  of  its  substance,  enlarge- 
ment of  the  ventricles,  and  serous  effusion.  Diffuse  pachy- 
meningitis,  effusion  of  blood  into  the  membranes  or  the  layers  of 
exudations,  as  described  by  Virchow  and  Kokitansky,  and  de- 
generation of  the  arteries,  are  not  unfrequent.  The  degeneration 
of  the  nerve-substance  from  the  increase  of  connective  tissue  has 
been  proved  by  Rokitansky  and  others  to  extend  sometimes  even 
to  the  spinal  cord.  Such  morbid  changes  are  certainly  more 
evident  in  general  paralysis  than  in  any  other  form  of  insanity, 
but  they  do  not  occur  with  uniform  constancy,  nor  are  they  of 
uniform  character  ;  in  some  cases  the  meningitis  being  most 
marked,  in  others  the  atrophy  of  the  brain,  and  in  others  the 


IV.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  395 

induration.  Dr.  Sankey  has  made  a  careful  comparison  of  the 
morbid  appearances  met  with  in  fifteen  cases  of  general  paralysis 
with  those  met  with  in  fifteen  cases  of  chronic  insanity  of  other 
forms.  The  greatest  difference  was  in  the  frequency  of  effusion 
beneath  the  arachnoid,  which  was  found  eleven  times  in  the 
fifteen  cases  of  general  paralysis,  and  three  times  in  the  other 
cases.  Adhesion  of  the  pia  mater  to  the  grey  matter  occurred 
in  eight  of  the  general  paralytics,  and  in  only  one  of  the  others. 
The  convolutions  were  abnormally  open  and  wide  apart  in  nine 
of  the  cases  of  general  paralysis,  and  in  three  of  the  other  cases  ; 
in  eight  of  the  former,  again,  was  there  a  dark  discoloration  of 
the  grey  matter,  which  was  met  with  in  only  three  of  the  latter ; 
the  layers  of  the  grey  matter  were  indistinctly  marked  in  ten 
cases  of  general  paralysis,  and  in  six  of  the  other  cases.*  Plainly 
there  are  no  morbid  appearances  characteristic  of  general  para- 
lysis, although  morbid  changes  are  more  constant  in  it.. 

The  late  Schroeder  van  der  Kolk  has  given  a  detailed  descrip- 
tion of  several  cases  of  what  is  commonly  considered  a  very  rare 
affection,  but  which  he  thought  by  no  means  so  uncommon — 
namely,  a  diffuse  inflammation  of  the  dura  mater,  or  idiopathic 
pachymeningitis.  It  is,  he  thought,  often  overlooked,  and  con- 
sidered to  be  rheumatic  headache.  The  symptoms  are  intolerable 
headache,  delirium,  sometimes  calmer  delusion,  and  coma ;  and 
after  death  the  dura  mater  is  found  to  be  extensively  inflamed, 
and  more  or  less  adherent  to  one  or  both  hemispheres ;  the 
inflammation  has  in  some  cases  extended  to  the  brain,  which 
is  found  to  be  softened.  According  to  his  experience,  this 
affection,  where  neither  syphilis  nor  injury  could  be  assumed  as 
cause,  was  not  rare.  A  remarkable  circumstance  in  regard  to  it 
is  the  regular  intermissions  that  occur  in  its  course,  the  patient 
having  considerable  intervals  of  apparent  health. 

On  the  authority  of  so  eminent  an  observer  as  Schroeder  van 
der  Kolk  this  idiopathic  inflammation  of  the  membranes  must 
be  admitted ;  but  it  must  also  be  allowed  that  the  morbid  appear- 
ances described  by  him  are  very  like  those  which  have  since 
been  described  as  almost  pathognomonic  of  syphilis.  A  diffuse 
nbrinous  exudation  of  low  form,  glueing  the  membranes  to  the 
brain-substance  beneath,  has  been  held  to  be  a  characteristic 

*  On  the  Pathology  of  General  Paresis. — Journal  of  Mental  Sdence,  1864, 


396  TEE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

feature  of  syphilitic  dementia.  Instead  of  being  diffused  the 
exudation  is  sometimes  circumscribed,  so  as  to  have  the  form 
of  a  tumour ;  and  it  may  then  press  into  the  brain-substance, 
causing  softening  immediately  around  it.  Or,  again,  the  gum-like 
exudation,  or  syphiloma,  as  it  is  called,  may  take  place  as  a 
diffuse  infiltration  or  as  a  tumour  within  the  substance  of  the 
brain,  the  membranes  being  unaffected.  Such  is  the  morbid 
product  which  recent  researches  have  assigned  to  syphilis  ;  and, 
according  to  Virchow,  it  consists,  at  the  outset,  like  the  substance 
of  granulations,  of  an  exuberant  growth  of  connective  tissue,  its 
further  development  taking  place  in  two  directions :  (1)  either 
the  formation  of  cells  predominates,  and  then  the  intercellular 
substance  is  soft,  jelly-like,  mucous,  or  fluid,  the  whole  mass 
remaining  jelly-like  and  coherent,  or  undergoing  purulent  dege- 
neration ;  (2)  or  the  formation  of  cells  is  less  prolific,  and  the 
intercellular  substance  increases,  so  that  the  fibres  preponderate ; 
the  cells  are  spindle-shaped,  or  have  the  stellate  form  of  the  cells 
of  connective  tissue,  or  the  round  form  of  granulation  cells. 
Ultimately  yellow  patches  of  fatty  degeneration  appear  in  it. 
There  certainly  is  no  character  whereby  this  albumino-fibroid 
exudation  can  be  distinguished  as  a  specific  product,  and  every 
pathologist  admits  the  difficulty  of  distinguishing  it  from  tu- 
bercle. The  starting-point  of  its  formation  has  been  shown  by 
Virchow  to  be  the  nuclei  of  the  connective  tissue  and  its  equi- 
valents ;  the  proper  elements  of  the  organ  undergoing  atrophy  as 
the  result  of  the  hypertrophy  of  the  connective  tissue.*  The  form 
of  insanity  with  which  this  syphiloma  is  associated  in  its  extreme 
stage  is,  as  might  be  expected,  a  miserable  paralytic  dementia. 

Such  are  the  morbid  appearances  met  with  in  cases  of  insanity, 
a  general  summary  of  which,  after  Schroeder  van  der  Kolk,  may 
here  be  added : — When  the  patient  has  died  at  the  beginning  01 
acute  insanity,  and  the  pia  mater  is  stripped  off,  the  cortical  layer 
will  exhibit  unequal  coloration;  certain  convolutions  being  rosy, 
others  pale.  The  differences  are  often  detectable  only  by  very 
careful  observation  ;  they  are  the  results  of  great  congestion  or 
commencing  inflammation,  and  are  found  more  often  in  those 
who  have  died  of  typhus  fever  or  after  acute  delirium  than  in 

*  Virchow's  Archiv,  vol.  xv.  p.  217.  Das  Syphilom,  oder  die  constitutionell- 
syphilitische  Neubildung,  von  E.  Wagner.  Archiv  der  Heilkunde,  1863. 


iv.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  397 

insanity,  because  death  but  seldom  occurs  at  an  early  stage. 
After  a  longer  duration  the  disease  appears  to  pass  into  a  chronic 
inflammation.  There  is  some  difficulty  in  stripping  off  the  pia 
mater,  the  vessels  of  which  are  strongly  injected,  from  the  surface 
of  the  brain  ;  and  portions  of  grey  matter  are  sometimes  brought 
away  with  it.  More  or  less  exudation  commonly  occurs  between 
the  arachnoid  and  the  pia  mater,  and  the  former  may  form  a 
thick,  white,  opaque  layer,  through  which  the  convolutions  are 
scarcely  visible.  After  a  still  longer  duration,  when  dementia 
is  thoroughly  established,  there  is  no  longer  any  increase  of  vas- 
cular injection.  The  vessels  are  less  full  than  natural,  and  the 
pia  mater  may  even  in  some  cases  be  stripped  off  with  more  ease 
than  in  health,  a  clear  serous  fluid  flowing  away  the  while  ;  the 
grey  substance  appears  pale  or  anemic,  and  somewhat  atrophied; 
and  the  vessels,  especially  at  the. base  of  the  brain,  are  beset 
with  atheromatous  patches.  The  degeneration  extends  into  the 
ventricles,  the  lining  membrane  being  thickened,  and  sometimes 
covered  with  fine  granulations,  and  more  or  less  fluid  being 
effused  into  them.  According  to  Schroeder  van  der  Kolk,  the 
membrane  "  covering  the  corpora  striata  is  most  thickened  and 
cannot  as  a  rule  be  stripped  off  without  tearing  the  commonly 
softened  nerve  substance  beneath  ;"  this  particular  change  being 
declared  during  life  by  paralytic  symptoms,  such  as  trembling  of 
the  lips,  difficulty  of  articulation,  and  uncertain  walk 

Interesting  observations  have  been  made  upon  the  absolute 
weight  of  the  brain,  and  also  upon  the  specific  gravity  thereof 
in  the  insane ;  but  further  experiments  on  these  points  are  yet 
needed.  Dr.  Skae  and  Dr.  Boyd  have  found  the  absolute  weight 
of  the  brain  to  be  slightly  increased  in  the  insane,  the  increase 
being  greatest  in  mania  and  least  in  general  paralysis.  The 
latter  observer  has  discovered  that  in  health  the  weight  of  the 
left  cerebral  hemisphere  almost  invariably  exceeds  that  of  the 
right  by  about  one-eighth  of  an  ounce.*  The  specific  gravity  of 
the  brain  in  the  insane  was  found  by  Dr.  Skae  and  Dr.  Sankey 
to  exhibit  an  increase  as  compared  with  that  in  the  sane ;  the 
lowest  specific  gravity,  though  still  above  the  average,  occurring 
in  dementia,  and  the  highest  being  met  with  in  epilepsy.  It 

*  This  is  not  confirmed  by  the  exact  investigations  of  Dr.  Thurnam,  Journal 
Mental  Science  April  1866. 


THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

appears,  however,  that  the  mode  of  death  influences  the  result, 
Dr.  Bucknill,  who  fixed  the  average  specific  gravity  of  the  healthy 
brain  at  1-036,  found  that  in  paralysis  of  chronic  character,  com- 
plicated with  insanity,  the  specific  gravity  varied  from  T036  to 
1-046 ;  in  paralysis  terminating  by  coma  it  was  1'040,  and  in 
some  acute  cases  it  rose  as  high  as  1/052  ;  and  in  paralysis  ter- 
minating by  syncope  or  asthenia  it  varied  from  1-036  to  1-039. 
The  increase  was  ascribable  in  some  cases  to  a  deposit  of  an 
inert  albuminous  matter  amongst  the  proper  nervous  elements, 
and  to  the  shrinking  of  them.  This  was  perhaps  a  morbid  state 
not  unlike  that  which  has  since  been  more  fully  investigated  by 
Professor  Albers,  and  described  by  him  as  parenchymatous  infarc- 
tion of  the  brain.  It  is  often  met  with  in  typhus,  and  sometimes 
in  cases  of  insanity,  and  gives  rise  to  the  condition  described 
as  cerebral  sclerosis:  the  brain  substance  is  found  to  be  more 
compact  and  consistent  than  normal,  and  on  slicing  it  the  thin 
layers  are  tough  and  unusually  elastic.  This  condition  has  also 
been  met  with  in  imbecile  children  in  whom  irregular  nutrition 
of  the  cranium  and  the  brain  has  probably  ended  in  a  sub- 
inflammatory  state.  Scrofulous  parenchymatous  infarction  occurs 
sometimes  in  children  and  young  people  of  scrofulous  habit,  and 
according  to  its  severity  and  extent  gives  rise  to  different  degrees 
of  cerebral  disorder,  which  may  be  arrested,  or  may  lay  the  foun- 
dation of  future  insanity.  Meckel  and  others  have  recorded 
instances  of  induration  of  the  brain  in  the  insane,  but  there  was 
said  to  be  no  increase  in  the  weight  of  the  brain-substance  when 
compared  with  equal  portions  of  healthy  brain,  except  in  a  slight 
degree  in  one  or  two  examples.  A  fibrinous  or  albumino-fibroid 
exudation  amongst  the  proper  nerve  elements  is  manifestly  not 
an  uncommon  feature  of  the  degeneration  of  extreme  insanity, 
and  appears  to  be  strictly  comparable  with  the  result  of  what 
is  described  as  chronic  inflammation  in  other  organs,  such  as 
the  liver  and  the  spleen.  What  effect  it  has  upon  the  absolute 
weight  and  the  specific  gravity  of  the  brain  it  must  be  the  aim 
of  future  observations  definitely  to  settle. 

A  general  survey  of  the  foregoing  morbid  appearances  will 
scarcely  fail  to  leave  a  conviction  of  their  adequate  nature  as  signs 
of  severe  cerebral  disorder.  Bearing  in  mind  that  the  vascular 
disturbance  is,  in  the  sequence  of  events,  secondary  to  the  disor- 


iv.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  399 

dered  action  of  the  individual  nerve  elements,  it  is,  even  when 
only  slight,  of  great  significance,  and  affords  sufficient  evidence 
of  primary  disorder  of  the  delicate  nerve  element.  When  it 
is  in  a  condition  of  healthy  activity,  the  nerve-cell  maintains 
certain  definite  relations  with  its  supply  of  blood ;  but  when, 
from  some  cause,  its  vital  power  is  lowered  and  its  function  dis- 
ordered, immediately  the  relations  with  its  surroundings  are 
changed ;  the  blood  flowing  through  the  (so  to  speak)  infected 
districts  feels  the  effect  of  the  lowered  vitality;  the  vessels  dilate, 
and  the  blood-corpuscles  manifest  a  tendency  to  adhere  to  one 
another  and  to  the  walls  of  the  vessels ;  the  abnormal  vascular 
injection,  not  less  than  the  maniacal  excitement,  testifies  indeed 
to  the  loss  of  the  natural  vital  tension  and  to  the  manifestation 
of  an  inferior  activity.  Carry  the  disturbance  yet  further,  or 
prolong  it,  and  the  evidences  of  vital  degeneration — in  other 
words,  of  the  resolution  of  higher  into  lower  forms  of  life — are 
still  more  marked.  The  increase  of  the  connective  tissue,  or 
the  fibrinous  exudation,  with  the  atrophy  of  the  proper  nerve 
elements,  is  as  plain  evidence  of  degeneration  as  is  the  mental 
incoherence  ;  and  in  the  difference  of  dignity  between  the  nerve- 
cell  and  connective  tissue  corpuscle  there  is  a  gap  as  great  as 
that  between  sound  mental  activity  and  dementia. 

Eecent  microscopical  examinations  of  the  brain  after  insanity 
have  added  something  to  our  knowledge  of  its  pathology.  The 
most  constant  result  has  been  to  establish  the  exuberant  produc- 
tion of  connective  tissue  in  long  standing  insanity,  and  especially 
in  general  paralysis.  It  is  now  known  that  there  is  a  homo- 
geneous matrix  of  connective  tissue  lying  between  and  support- 
ing the  nerve  elements  of  the  brain,  and  continuous  with  the 
ependyma  of  the  ventricles ;  it  appears  to  be  very  apt,  under 
certain  circumstances,  to  undergo  an  undue  increase,  to  the  de- 
triment of  the  proper  elements  of  the  part.  The  researches  of  • 
Eokitansky  and  Wedl  into  the  morbid  changes  in  general  para- 
lysis make  known  a  more  or  less  diseased  state  of  the  capillaries 
of  the  cortical  substance  of  the  brain.  There  is  a  certain  tortuosity 
of  the  capillaries  apparent  in  almost  every  case,  this  being  in  some 
cases  only  a  simple  curve  or  twist,  in  others  amounting  to  a  more 
complex  twisting,  and  even  to  little  knots  of  varicose  vessels.  Dr. 
Sankey  thinks  that  what  Eokitansky  and  Wedl  have  described  as 


400  .    THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

aneurism  al  dilatation  is  really  such  a  varicose  knot.  Eound  the 
capillaries  and  small  arteries  and  veins  there  is  often  a  hyaline 
deposit  of  what  is  supposed  to  be  embryonic  connective  tissue, 
beset  with  oblong  nuclei  ;  this  afterwards  becoming  more 
and  more  fibrous,  so  that  the  vessel  may  look  like  a  piece  of 
connective  tissue,  in  which  granules  of  fat  or  calcareous  matter 
are  occasionally  seen.  It  appears  that  this  growth  of  connective 
tissue  may  have  its  starting-point,  not  only  from  the  nuclei  of 
the  walls  of  the  blood-vessels,  but  also  from  the  proper  nuclei  of 
the  brain-substance.  As  a  consequence  of  its  exuberant  increase, 
the  nerve  elements  as.  well  as  the  delicate  capillaries  are  in- 
jured or  destroyed  ;  "  in  the  grey  substance  the  ganglionic  cells 
appear  inflated,  their  continuations  are  undoubtedly  torn,  and 
the  nerve- tubes  penetrating  the  grey  substance"  are  destroyed. 
Eokitansky  believes  that  this  is  not  to  be  looked  upon  as  an 
inflammatory  process,  and  it  certainly  is  not  so  in  the  common 
acceptation  of  the  meaning  of  inflammation.  In  connexion  with 
the  hypertrophied  tissue  are  found  amyloid  corpuscles,  colloid 
corpuscles,  calcareous  and  fatty  granules — all  the  product  of  a 
retrograde  metamorphosis  going  on.  There  are,  however,  two 
ways  in  which  retrograde  products  are  formed :  first,  there  is  a 
mal-nutrition,  or  a  retrograde  nutritive  process,  whereby  the 
vitality  not  being  at  the  height  necessary  to  the  production  of 
the  proper  elements,  there  are  engendered  from  the  germinal 
nuclei  elements  of  a  lower  kind — connective  tissue  instead  of 
nerve ;  and,  secondly,  there  is  a  retrograde  metamorphosis,  of  the 
formed  elements  of  the  part.  The  process  is  essentially  one  of 
vital  degeneration,  whether  called  inflammation  or  not ;  and, 
when  we  consider  the  genuine  meaning  of  the  pathological 
changes,  they  are  seen  to  be  in  accordance  with  the  symptoms 
of  mental  decay. 

The  results  of  an  elaborate  examination  of  the  morbid  changes 
in  a  case  in  which  there  was  grey  degeneration  of  the  brain  and 
spinal  cord,  by  Dr.  E.  Eindfleisch,  may  help  us  to  a  conception 
of  the  meaning  of  the  retrograde  changes  which  take  place  in 
disease.  The  patient  had  died  from  tabes  dorsalis ;  and  in  the 
anterior  tracts  of  the  cord,  in  the  fornix,  corpus  callosurn,  and 
centrum  ovale,  the  continuity  of  the  healthy  structure  was  inter- 
rupted by  numerous  patches  exhibiting  different  degrees  of 


iv.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  401 

degeneration,  from  a  greyish  pulp  to  sclerosity.  In  the  main, 
Eindfleisch  confirms  Eokitansky : "  the  process  of  degeneration 
seemed  to  begin  in  the  vessels,  as  the  walls  of  them  were  enor- 
mously thickened  by  a  number  of  cells  and  nuclei,  and  their 
diameter  was  increased;  and  this  first  stage  he  considers  the 
result  of  long  enduring  hyperaemia.  The  neuroglia,  or  hyaline 
connective  tissue,  next  undergoes  change,  fibres  being  formed  in 
the  amorphous  basis  substance ;  the  nerve  fibres  then  suffer 
atrophy,  lose  their  medulla,  and  appear  to  consist  of  axis 
cylinder  and  sheath,  or  of  axis  cylinder  only.  'As  they  disappear, 
the  connective  tissue  increases ;  numerous  single  nuclei  appear 
in  it,  as  also  groups  of  nuclei,  which  seem  to  proceed  from  the 
division  of  a  single  nucleus.  Eound  these  groups  a  certain 
quantity  of  finely  granular  substance  collects,  so  that  cell-like 
bodies  are  formed,  resembling  the  four-nucleated  bodies  described 
in  marrow  by  Kb'lliker  and  Eobin.  The  fibres  of  the  connective 
tissue  are  formed  out  of  the  basis  substance,  Eindfleisch  thinks, 
but  are  probably  developed  in  organic  relation  to  the  nuclei.  At 
a  still  further  stage,  retrogressive  metamorphosis  sets  in  :  mole- 
cules of  fat  appear  in  the  ganglionic  cells  according  to  Yirchow, 
and  as  they  increase  they  form  granular  bodies,  which,  how- 
ever, Eokitansky  holds  to  be  produced  from  the  fragments  of 
the  medulla  of  the  nerve  fibres.  So  also  is  it,  in  Eindfleisch's 
opinion,  with  the  amyloid  corpuscles  that  are  found ;  the 
nucleated  cells  of  the  connective  tissue  go  through  the  amyloid 
degeneration ;  and  he  has  watched  every  stage  of  the  transition 
from  the  normal  cell  to  the  amyloid  corpuscle.  When  by  fatty 
degeneration  the  greater  number  of  nerve-cells  have  been  con- 
verted into  a  detritus  capable  of  being  absorbed,  the  fine  elastic 
fibres  contract,  get  closer  and  closer  together,  and  remain  as  the 
constituent  tissue  of  the  cicatrix,  which  sometimes  causes  con- 
siderable deformity ;  whole  sections  of  nerve  substance  having 
been  replaced  by  a  relatively  small  quantity  of  an  unyielding, 
compact,  dry  tissue.  There  are  then  three  principal  stages  in 
the  degenerative  process : — (1)  a  change  in  the  vessels,  whereby 
there  must  be  a  great  hindrance  to  regular  nutrition ;  (2)  atrophy 
of  nerve  element,  either  in  consequence  of  the  interference  with 
its  nutrition  (Eindfleisch),  or  from  the  growth  of  connective 
27 


402  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

tissue  (Rokitansky) ;  and  (3)  the  subsequent  metamorphosis  of 
the  connective  tissue.* 

A  very  careful  microscopical  examination  of  the  brains  of 
three  idiots  has  been  made  by  "Wedl.  The  changes  were  such  as 
are  usually  met  with  in  atrophy  of  the  cortical  layers.  In  the 
pia  mater  and  the  convolutions  there  was  local  obliteration  of 
capillaries,  these  sometimes  having  the  appearance  of  a  dirty 
yellowish  band  of  connective  tissue,  which,  like  other  connective 
tissue,  swelled  up  and  lost  its  wavy  lines  in  acetic  acid.  Other 
thickenings  in  the 'capillaries  of  the  cortical  layers  he  describes 
as  colloid :  these  were  knotty  swellings  in  their  course  that  were 
unaffected  by  acetic  acid.  Atheromatous  degeneration  of  arteries, 
veins,  and  capillaries  was  more  or  less  marked  in  all  the  cases. 
In  one  instance  the  small  arteries  and  veins,  and  the  capillaries, 
were  affected  with  funnel-like  dilatations,  owing  to  a  prolifera- 
tion of  nuclei  that  lay  nestled  in  them ;  and  a  transparent  basis 
substance  containing  many  oval  nuclei  surrounded  the  capillaries 
for  some  distance.  The  ganglionic  nerve-cells  exhibited  some 
metamorphosis  of  their  contents  in  all  the  three  cases ;  the 
change  consisting  in  a  condensation  of  the  contents  with  dis- 
appearance of  the  nuclei — a  condition  which  called  to  mind  the 
colloid  degeneration  of  the  ganglionic  cells  of  the  retina."}" 

It  appears,  then,  that  an  increase  of  connective  tissue,  with 
atrophy  and  destruction  of  nerve  element,  so  far  from  being 
peculiar  to  general  paralysis,  is  of  common  occurrence  in  cerebral 
degeneration  of  long  standing.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that 
the  morbid  product  which  is  thought  to  be  the  result  of  syphi- 
litic disease  is  of  like  nature ;  and  Billroth  found  a  peculiar 
gelatinous  degeneration  of  the  cortex  of  the  cerebellum,  which 
he  met  with  in  one  insane  person,  to  consist  of  soft  connective 
tissue.  This  proliferation  of  connective  tissue  with  destruction 
of  the  nerve  elements  has  at  any  rate  been  already  observed  in 
dementia  following  on  continued  insanity,  in  general  paralysis,  in 
syphilitic  dementia,  in  tabes  dorsalis,  and  in  congenital  idiocy. 

It  will  be  well  to  enumerate  briefly  the  different  kinds  of 

« 

*  Histologisches  Detail  zu  der  grauen  Degeneration  von  Gehirn  u.  Etickenmark, 
von  Dr.  E.  Kindfleisch. — "Virchow's  Archiv,  b.  vi. 

t  Histologische  Untersuchungen  iiber  Hirntheile  dreier  Salzburger  Idioten, 
von  Dr.  C.  Wedl,  Zeitschrift  der  K.  K.  Gesellsehaft  der  Aerzte  in  Wien,  1863. 


iv.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  403 

degeneration  that  have  been  met  with  in  the  brain  after  insanity, 
to  the  end  that  the  nature  of  the  retrograde  changes  may  be 
more  evident : — 

(a)  There  is  in  the  most  acute  form  of  insanity  an  acute  hyper- 
femia,  or  an  early  stage  of  inflammatory  degeneration.  Dr. 
Tigges  has  recently  described  an  increase  of  nuclei  in  the 
ganglionic  cells,  and  he  believes  the  numerous  scattered  nuclei, 
usually  thought  to  belong  to  connective  tissue,  to  have  really 
escaped  from  ganglionic  cells  at  a  later  stage  of  their  inflam- 
matory degeneration.* 

(1)  There  is  that  degeneration  which  consists  in  the  increase 
of  connective  tissue  and  in  the  atrophy  of  the  nerve  elements. 
Whether  called  sub-inflammatory,  and  described  as  the  result  of 
a  chronic  hypercemia,  or  not,  is  not  of  much  moment  so  long  as 
we  keep  in  mind  the  true  relations  of  the  organic  element  to  the 
supply  of  blood,  and  also  the  true  degenerative  nature  of  the 
inflammatory  process.  It  seems  indeed  to  admit  of  small  doubt 
that  an  exudation  of  a  hyaline  substance  into  the  parenchyma  of 
the  brain  may  take  place  without  any  signs  of  hypersemia  or 
inflammation,  and  without  any  of  the  products  of  inflammation, 
the  exudation  afterwards  undergoing  more  or  less  fibrous  trans- 
formation. The  vitality  of  the  part  is  not  at  the  height  necessary 
for  the  due  formation  and  nutrition  of  the  higher  species  of 
organic  element,  and  organic  elements  of  a  lower  kind  are  pro- 
duced. When  the  degeneration  is  greater  and  more  active,  as  it 
is  in  advanced  inflammation,  then  elements  are  produced  of  a 
still  lower  kind,  and  incapable  of  any  organization ;  they  are  the 
so-called  exudation  corpuscles  and  pus  corpuscles,  which  are  met 
with  in  inflammatory  or  red  softening,  but  not  in  the  chronic 
morbid  changes  of  insanity.  Thus  much  for  the  connective-tissue 
degeneration. 

(c)  Fatty  degeneration  is  a  retrograde  change  very  frequently 
met  with.  It  may  take  place  either  in  the  smaller  vessels  of  the 
brain,  as  in  atheroma,  or  in  the  proper  nerve  elements,  or  in 
the  new  morbid  products.  In  what  is  known  as  white  softening 
of  the  brain,  granular  bodies  are  found  which  are  composed 
principally  of  fat,  and  which  some  hold  to  proceed  from  the 
.degeneration  of  the  natural  cells  of  the  part,  while  others  main- 

*  Zeitschrift  fur  Psychiatric,  b.  xx. 


404  TEE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

tain  that  they  originate  in  the  morbid  products.*  In  the  retro- 
grade metamorphosis  of  the  hypertrophied  connective  tissue 
already  described,  fatty  degeneration  takes  place  largely. 

(d)  Amyloid  degeneration. — It  admits  of  no  doubt  that  the 
corpora  amylacea,  or  little  starch-like  bodies,  which  are  often 
found  in  great  numbers  in  the  brain,  are  pathological  products. 
Wedl  thinks  that  they  should  be  ranked  along  with  the  so-called 
colloid  corpuscles,  and  regarded  as  indicative  of  the  increased 
exudation  which  may  take  place  without  hypersemia.      Eind- 
fleisch,  on  the  other  hand,  as  already  stated,  believes  that  he  has 
traced  their  production  by  a  gradual  transition  from  the  nucleated 
cells  of  the  connective  tissue.     Whatever  be  their  true  mode  of 
origin  and  exact  nature,  there  can  be  no  question  that  they  are 
products  of  a  retrograde  metamorphosis. 

(e)  Pigmentary  degeneration  is  met  with  in  the  ganglionic  cells 
of  the  brain  in  senile  atrophy.     Schroeder  van  der  Kolk  found 
the  cells  of  the  medulla  spinalis  and  oblongata  to  be  darker  and 
more  opaque  in  old  age  ;   and  in  one  case  of  dementia  after 
mania,  where   there  was   partial  paralysis  of  the  tongue,  the 
ganglionic  cells  forming  the  nuclei  of  the  hypoglossal  nerves 
were  in  a  state  of  blackish-brown  degeneration,  so  that  he  at 
first  mistook  them  for  little  points  of  blood.     On  more  careful 
examination,  however,  they  were  seen  to  be  degenerated  gangli- 
onic cells,  filled  with  granular  dark  brown  pigment.     In  regard 
to  this  form  of  degeneration,  certain  pigmentary  changes  that 
have  been  described  in  the  retina  are  not  without  interest.     In 
what  is  called — not  very  philosophically — Retinitis  pigmcntosa, 
there  are  found  scattered  over  the  fundus  ocull  irregular  figures 
of  deep  black  colour,  consisting  of  pigment  apparently  in  the 
substance  of  the  retina.     A  point  of  interest  wdth  regard  to  these 
cases  is,  that  they  often  occur  in  the  same  family,  and  are 
accompanied  by  general  imperfection  of  development.     Grafe 
has  observed  this  degeneration  to  be  often  of  hereditary  occur- 
rence ;  and  Liebreich  has  pointed  out  that  many  subjects  of  the 
defect  are,  like  albinos,  the  offspring  of  marriages  of  consanguinity. 
More  or  less  imperfection  of  the  mental  faculties  and  arrested 

*  Dr.  Meschede,  in  Virchow's  Archiv,  1865,  describes  the  early  morbid  changes 
in  general  paralysis  as  inflammatory,  and  the  later  changes  as  those  of  fatty  and 
pigmentary  degeneration  of  the  cells.  In  the  Journal  of  Mental  Science,  Oct.  1866, 
there  is  an  abridgment  of  Dr.  Meschede's  paper,  with  notes,  by  Dr.  Blandford, 


iv.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  405 

development  of  the  sexual  organs  are  usually  present ;  and  the 
concurrence  of  mutism  and  cretinism  with  Relinitis  pigmentosa 
is  occasional.  Pigmentary  degeneration  may  surely  be  accepted 
as  no  less  certain  a  mark  of  retrograde  pathological  change  in 
the  brain  than  it  is  in  the  retina. 

(/)  Calcareous  degeneration, — Granules  of  earthy  matter  are 
common  enough  in  connexion  with  the  hypertrophied  connective 
tissue  of  long  continued  and  extreme  insanity.  But  there  have 

been  described  also  cases  in  which  calcification  of  some  of  the 

» 

ganglionic  cells  of  the  brain  has  been  met  with.  Erlenmeyer 
found  the  commissure  of  the  optic  nerves  hardened  by  a  deposit 
of  calcareous  matter  in  the  brain  of  a  monomaniac  who  had  died 
with  epileptiform  convulsions.  It  had  been  first  deposited  about 
the  small  arteries  and  in  the  connective  tissue ;  and  the  cells 
had  afterwards  been  occupied  and  made  opaque  by  fine  granules 
of  what  appeared  to  be  phosphate  of  lime.  Forster,  in  his 
Atlas  of  Pathological  Anatomy,  describes  calcified  cells  found  in 
the  grey  substance  of  the  lumbar  enlargement  of  the  spinal  cord 
of  a  boy  whose  lower  extremities  were  paralysed.  Heschl  met 
with  what  he  calls  an  ossification  of  cells  in  the  brain  of  a  patient, 
aged  twenty-six,  who  had  died  melancholic:  they  were  in  the 
compact  substance  surrounding  a  small  hsemorrhagic  cavity  in 
the  cortical  part  of  the  right  cerebral  hemisphere.  Hydrochloric 
acid  dissolved  the  granular  contents,  and  left  the  cells  with  a  pale 
outline  in  view.*  Dr.  Wilks  believes  certain  bodies  which  he 
found  in  the  brain  of  a  general  paralytic,  in  whom  the  small 
arteries  were  calcified,  to  have  been  ganglionic  cells  that  had 
undergone  calcareous  degeneration.!  Not  without  interest  is  it 
thus  to  observe  on  a  microscopical  scale  a  similar  degeneration 
to  that  which  the  whole  organism  must  ultimately  undergo  :  as 
the  body  is  formed  out  of  the  dust  of  the  earth  by  an  upward 
transformation  of  matter  and  force,  so  by  a  retrograde  metamor- 
phosis of  matter  and  correlative  resolution  of  force  does  it,  in 
parts  and  as  a  whole,  return  to  the  earth  whereof  it  is  made. 

Those  who  duly  weigh  the  pathological  import  of  these  dif- 
ferent sorts  of  degeneration,  who  reflect  on  the  great  gap  which 
there  is  between  a  calcareous  granule  and  a  nerve-cell  in  the 
economy  of  nature,  or  between  a  connective  tissue  corpuscle  and 

*  Schmidt's  Jahrbiich,  1863.  t  Journal  of  Mental  Science,  1861 


406  TEH  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

a  nerve-cell  in  the  histological  scale,  must  be  constrained  to 
admit  that  the  difference  is  not  less  great  than  the  difference 
between  dementia  and  sound  mental  action,  and  cannot  venture 
to  assert  that  the  morbid  appearances  throw  no  light  whatever 
on  the  nature  of  insanity.  Even  the  slight  signs  of  hypersemia 
are  of  weighty  significance  if  their  true  relations  are  recognised, 
if  they  are  viewed  as  results  and  evidence  of  that  degeneration 
of  individual  nerve  element  of  which  the  mental  disorder  is 
also  result  and  evidence,  if  they  and  the  insanity  are  viewed  as, 
what  they  often  are,  concomitant  effects  of  a  common  cause. 

3.  Morbid  Conditions  of  other  Organs. — Amongst  the  most 
frequent  of  local  diseases  met  with  in  the  insane,  and  amongst 
the  most  frequently  fatal,  are  diseases  of  the  respiratory  organs. 

Diseases  of  Lung. — Many  insane  of  low,  deteriorated  constitu- 
tion, especially  the  demented  paralytics,  succumb  to  a  diffuse 
pneumonia  of  low  type.  The  usual  symptoms,  however,  are 
rarely  marked,  being  masked  by  the  madness ;  there  is  seldom 
any  cough,  expectoration,  or  pain ;  no  complaint  is  made ;  there 
may  be  little  or  no  dyspnoea ;  and  the  only  ground  of  diagnosis 
lies  in  the  physical  signs.  Gangrene  of  the  lung  was  observed  by 
Guislain  almost  exclusively  amongst  the  insane  who  had  refused 
nourishment  and  died  of  exhaustion,  and  in  as  many  as  nine 
such  cases  out  of  thirteen  ;  but  it  has  been  found  since  his  time 
that  th'e  disease  is  not  limited  to  those  who  refuse  food,  although 
especially  frequent  amongst  them.  In  the  Vienna  Asylum  there 
were,  out  of  602  post-mortem  examinations  made  in  three  years, 
fifteen  cases  of  gangrene  of  the  lung.  Pain,  cough,  dyspnoea, 
and  fever  are  often  entirely  absent ;  there  is  prostration,  and  the 
extremities  are  cold ;  the  complexion  is  dusky  red,  or  cyanotic  ; 
the  odour  of  the  sputa  and  breath  becomes  intolerably  offensive ; 
extreme  weakness  is  increased  by  diarrhoea,  and  death  follows 
within  a  period  varying  from  ten  days  to  three  weeks. 

Almost  every  writer  on  insanity  calls  attention  to  the  fre- 
quency of  phthisis  pulmonalis  among  the  insane,  although  there 
is  far  from  being  an  agreement  as  to  the  proportion  of  cases  in 
which  it  occurs.  A  careful  comparison  of  the  statistics  of  several 
asylums  by  Von  Hageii  showed  that  on  an  average  about 
one-fourth  of  the  deaths  were  attributed  to  phthisis ;  this 
proportion  really  being  about  the  same  as  that  for  the  sane 


iv.]  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  407 

population  above  fourteen  years  of  age.  Out  of  1,082  deaths  which 
occurred  in  the  Royal  Edinburgh  Asylum  from  the  year  1842  to 
1861,  phthisis  was  the  assigned  cause  of  death  in  315,  or  in 
nearly  one-third  (Dr.  Clouston).  In  eight  of  the  American 
asylums  the  deaths  from  consumption  were,  according  to  Dr. 
Workman,  27  per  cent,  of  the  whole  number  of  deaths.  Dr. 
Clouston  has,  however,  proved  by  the  examination  of  a  series  of 
carefully  made  post-mortem  examinations  that  phthisis  was  the 
assigned  cause,  of  death  in  only  73  of  136  men,  and  in  97  of  146 
women,  in  whose  bodies  tubercular  deposit  was  actually  found, — 
that  is,  in  little  more  than  half  of  those  in  whom  tubercle  really 
existed.  His  conclusion  is,  that  not  only  is  phthisis  a  more  fre- 
quently assigned  cause  of  death  amongst  the  insane  than  amongst 
the  sane,  but  that  tubercular  deposition  is  about  twice  as  fre- 
quent in  the  bodies  of  the  former  as  in  the  latter. 

The  relations  of  the  phthisical  to  the  mental  disease  are  of 
some  interest :  in  a  very  few  cases  the  outbreak  of  the  insanity 
seems  to  benefit  the  phthisis  ;  in  a  few  more,  where  the  phthisis 
is  chronic,  an  attack  of  insanity  may  be  followed  by  the  per- 
manent disappearance  of  the  phthisical  symptoms,  or  attacks  of 
mania  may  alternate  with  exacerbations  of  the  symptoms  of 
phthisis ;  but  in  the  great  majority  of  cases,  the  symptoms  of 
the  lung  disease  are  merely  masked  by  the  insanity,  the  depo- 
sition of  tubercle  going  steadily  on. 

Diseases  of  the  Heart. — Observers,  agreed  as  to  the  frequency 
of  their  occurrence,  differ  as  to  the  proportion  of  cases  in  which 
they  are  found:  Esquirol  found  them  in  one-fifteenth  of  his 
melancholic  patients,  Webster  in  one-eighth,  Bayle  in  one-sixth, 
Calmeil  and  Thore  in  nearly  one-third.  The  most  reliable  ob- 
servations of  late  years  tend  to  lessen  the  exaggerated  proportion 
commonly  assumed ;  out  of  602  post-mortem  examinations  in  the 
Vienna  Asylum,  affections  of  the  heart  were  met  with  in  about 
one-eighth  of  the  cases ;  and  in  some  of  these  the  disease  was 
very  slight 

Diseases  of  the  Abdominal  Organs. — More  or  less  inflammation 
of  the  intestinal  mucous  membrane  is  not  uncommon  among  the 
insane.  It  is  at  the  bottom  of  that  colliquative  diarrhoea  which 
at  last  carries  off  many  feeble  patients,  mostly  those  suffering 
from  paralytic  dementia,  but  now  and  then  even  some  who  are 


408  THE  PATHOLOGY  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP.  rv. 

maniacal  or  melancholic.  The  changed  position  of  the  colon 
especially  noted  by  Esquirol — the  transverse  portion  of  which 
lies  in  the  hypogastric  region  or  in  the  pelvis — is  not  of  any  real 
importance  or  of  any  special  significance. 

All  sorts  of  disorders  of  one  or  more  of  the  abdominal  organs 
have  been  met  with  in  particular  cases,  but  not  in  any  constant 
relation  to  any  particular  form  of  insanity.  Eokitansky  noticed 
a  considerable  increase  and  induration  of  the  cceliac  axis  in  a 
case  of  hypochondriasis  with  great  wasting.  Cancer  of  the 
stomach,  liver,  or  of  some  other  part  has  been  discovered  in 
cases  where  there  existed  during  life  a  delusion  with  regard  to 
some  animal  or  man  being  present  in  the  belly;  in  one  case, 
described  by  Esquirol,  where  delusions  of  this  sort  were  most 
extravagant,  there  was  chronic  peritonitis  which  had  glued 
together  the  intestines.  Diseases  of  the  sexual  organs  are,  as 
already  pointed  out,  of  some  importance  in  the  causation  of 
insanity.  In  the  female,  prolapsus  of  the  uterus,  fibrous  tumour 
of  the  uterus,  ovarian  cyst,  &c.  may  in  some  few  cases  impart 
to  the  insanity  a  sexual  character,  or  become  the  conditions  of 
peculiar  delusions  ;  but  in  other  cases  of  like  disease  there  may 
be  no  sort  of  connexion  traceable  between  the  character  of  the 
insanity  and  the  particular  disease.  Eemember  only  that,  by 
reason  of  the  intimate  connexion  and  interaction  between  one 
organ  and  another  as  parts  of  an  organic  whole,  disorder  of  any 
organ  must  conspire  with  other  predisposing  or  exciting  causes 
to  produce  insanity. 


CHAPTER  V. 

TEE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  INSANITY. 

TT  might  seem  to  be  no  difficult  matter  to  determine  when  a 
-*-  man's  mind  is  unsound,  and  yet  the  diagnosis  is  as  difficult 
in  some  cases  as  it  is  easy  in  others.  So  imperceptibly  does 
physiological  function  pass  into  pathological  function  through- 
out the  organism,  that  it  is  impossible  to  say  where  one  ends 
and  the  other  begins  in  the  case  of  any  organ :  disease  is  not 
any  mischievous  entity  that  has  taken  possession  of  the  body, 
and  must  be  driven  out  of  it  as  the  evil  spirit  was  driven  out 
of  the  demoniac  :  it  is  simply  vital  action  under  other  conditions 
than  those  which  we  agree  to  call  natural  or  typical.  Unsound- 
ness  of  mind  is  that  degree  of  deviation  from  healthy  mental  life 
which  it  is  agreed  by  the  common  consent  of  mankind  to  regard 
as  morbid.  That  there  should  be  extreme  uncertainty  in  de- 
ciding in  particular  cases,  arises  from  the  fact  that  various 
acts  which  may  be  the  results  of  insanity  may  also  be  the  acts  of 
vicious  or  criminal  persons,  in  whom  there  is  no  inclination  to 
suspect  disease.  It  will  not,  however,  suffice  to  make  it  the  posi- 
tive criterion  of  insanity,  that  a  man  is  unable  to  restrain  his 
actions  ;  for,  in  the  first  place,  there  are  some  criminals  who  by 
reason  of  a  bad  organization  cannot,  in  face  of  certain  temptations, 
control  their  actions  ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  there  are  persons 
unquestionably  insane  who  are  quite  capable  of  controlling  their 
actions,  if  they  have  a  sufficiently  strong  motive  to  do  so :  there 
are  some  insane  persons  who  are  really  criminal,  on  the  one  hand, 
and,  on  the  other,  there  are  criminals  who  are  really  insane, 
fhe  experience  of  those  connected  with  prisons  proves,  that 
weak-mindedness  predominates  in  the  criminal  population  as  a 


410  THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

class.  Mr.  Bruce  Thomson  states  that,  in  the  General  Prison 
for  Scotland,  as  many  as  one  in  nine,  or  nearly  12  per  cent,  were 
positively  weak-minded,  and  that  epilepsy  is  found  to  prevail  in 
much  larger  proportion  among  prisoners  than  in  the  population 
at  large.*  Evidently,  then,  there  must  at  times  occur  doubtful 
cases  which  it  is  uncertain  whether  to  treat  as  diseased  or  to 
punish  as  criminal.  It  is  not  so  plain,  however,  that  Jthe  popular 
opinion  which  assumes  that  a  rough  common  sense  is  best 
suited  to  guide  the  decision  is  correct ;  one  cannot  indeed  but 
think  that  special  study  and  experience  of  the  phenomena  of 
obscure  disease,  must  furnish  better  grounds  for  a  just  judgment 
concerning  it  than  entire  ignorance  can.  Lord  Westbury,  speaking 
as  Lord  Chancellor,  in  the  House  of  Lords,  before  he  fell  from  the 
height  of  place  which  gave  such  weight  to  any  opinions  which 
he  expressed,  thought  it  not  unbefitting  his  high  intellectual 
and  official  position  to  condemn  "the  evil  habit  which  had 
grown  up  of  assuming  that  insanity  was  a  physical  disease,  and 
not  a  subject  of  moral  inquiry,"  and  to  affirm  that  it  was  not 
necessary  "that  a  man  should  have  studied  the  subject  of 
insanity  in  order  to  form  a  conclusion  whether  a  man  was  or 
was  not  a  lunatic."  It  may  well  be  doubted  whether  a  Lord 
Chancellor  ever  before  gave  utterance  to  so  erroneous,  mis- 
chievous, and  unfortunate  an  opinion.  It  was  one  which,  falling 
in  with  and  strengthening  the  current  of  popular  prejudice,  was 
received  with  applause  at  the  time,  but  which  cannot  fail  to  be 
remembered  with  surprise  in  the  future  as  a  striking  example  of 
the  utter  ignorance  of  the  nature  of  mental  disease  displayed  by 
one  of  the  greatest  legal  intellects  of  his  day. 

Acute  mania  is  not  likely  to  be  overlooked,  or  to  be  con- 
founded with  any  other  disease.  The  only  doubtful  question  in 
regard  to  it  will  be  in  the  event  of  an  impostor  attempting  to 
simulate  it,  or  of  a  drunkard  actually  simulating  it.  Certainly 
lie  must  be  a  clever  impostor  who  can  simulate  the  wild  restless 
eye,  the  ceaseless  movements,  the  quick  fragmentary  associations 
of  ideas,  and  the  volubility  of  utterance  of  acute  mania  so  as  to 
deceive  an  experienced  observer ;  nor  can  he,  however  skilful 
an  actor,  pass  days  without  sleep,  and  even  weeks  with  only  a 
few  hours'  sleep,  maintaining  a  continual  activity,  as  the  acute 

*  Journal  of  Mental  Science,  October  1866. 


v.]  THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  INSANITY. 

maniac  does.  The  skin  in  acute  mania  is  dry  and  harsh,  or  cool 
and  clammy,  "but  the  skin  of  a  pretender  who  tries  to  keep  up 
a  prolonged  muscular  agitation  will  hardly  fail  to  be  hot  and 
sweating.  Delirium  tremens  will  be  distinguished  by  its  own 
characteristic  symptoms  —  the  muscular  tremors,  the  peculiar 
fearful  illusions  and  hallucinations,  the  cold  skin,  feeble  pulse, 
and  the  white  and  tremulous  tongue.  But  there  are  cases  in 
which  positive  insanity  is  produced  by  drink,  and  they  are 
sometimes  the  occasion  of  great  injustice  being  done  by  our 
legal  tribunals :  certain  persons  who  have  a  strong  predisposi- 
tion to  insanity,  or  who  have  been  once  insane,  or  who  have 
had  a  severe  injury  of  the  head  at  some  time,  do  actually 
become  truly  maniacal  for  a  while  after  an  alcoholic  debauch, 
or  are  rendered  temporarily  maniacal — being  probably  thought 
drunk — by  a  very  little  liquor.  In  this  condition  vivid  halluci- 
nations are  apt  to  arise,  and  the  sufferer  may  perpetrate  crime, 
not  knowing  afterwards  what  he  has  done,  and  certainly  at  the 
time  not  knowing  the  nature  of  the  act.  On  one  occasion  I  was 
asked  to  see  in  the  gaol  a  respectable  builder,  who  was  under- 
going imprisonment  for  a  rape  on  a  servant  girl  under  fourteen 
years  of  age,  and  I  was  never  more  convinced  of  anything  in  my 
life  than  of  the  truth  of  the  man's  assertion,  that  he  remembered 
nothing  whatever  of  the  crime  which  he  had  committed.  He 
had  for  some  time  heard  voices  speaking  to  him,  which  had  no 
existence  out  of  his  mind,  and  he  had  been  continually  drinking 
for  some  days  before  the  crime.  There  was  no  attempt  at 
concealment  or  deception  ;  he  spoke  with  perfect  candour ;  and 
he  still  heard  voices  speaking  to  him  through  the  ventilator  of 
his  cell.  Many  such  instances  have  been  recorded,  and  it  is 
high  time  they  were  recognised  by  those  who  preside  over  the 
administration  of  justice  :  the  common  erroneous  notion  that  if 
a  person  becomes  furious  after  intemperance  he  must  be  either 
"  mad  drunk  "  or  at  most  have  delirium  tremens  has  unquestion- 
ably worked  much  mischief.  It  admits  of  no  doubt  that  the 
effect  of  a  debauch  may  be  a  genuine  acute  mania,  marked  by 
active  and  violent  delirium. 

Chronic  mania  is  most  likely  to  be  feigned,  and  if  feigned 
with  skill  the  imposture  may  deceive  many.  However,  the 
impostor  generally  "  o'ersteps  the  modesty  of  nature,"  and  over- 


412  THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

acts  Iris  part ;  he  is  extreme  in  the  extravagance  of  what  he 
does,  while  he  falls  short  of  his  part  in  the  emotional  expression 
of  the  maniacal  countenance.  Thinking  that  a  lunatic  is  widely 
different  from  a  sane  person,  he  exaggerates  and  rants,  and  pro- 
duces something  not  like  a  lunatic.  He  pretends  perhaps  that 
he  cannot  remember  things,  as  what  day  follows  another,  or  how 
many  days  there  are  in  a  week,  that  he  cannot  add  the  simplest 
figures  together,  and  acts  foolishly  and  answers  stupidly  where  a 
real  lunatic  who  was  not  an  idiot  would  act  calmly  and  answer 
intelligently.  If  a  suggestion  be  made  incidentally  of  some 
symptom  which  he  ought  to  exhibit,  he  may  adopt  the  hint. 
The  history  of  the  case,  and  especially  of  the  mode  of  occurrence 
of  the  disease  and  of  the  circumstance  of  its  development,  will 
most  materially  aid  the  diagnosis.  If  there  be  no  previous  history 
to  be  had,  and  if  the  patient  refuse  to  converse,  a  long  observa- 
tion may  be  necessary  to  come  to  a  decision.  It  is  sm^prising 
how  long  an  impostor  will  sometimes  persist :  one  man,  of  whom 
Dr.  Bucknill  tells,  kept  up  the  practice  of  insanity  for  more  than 
two  years,  and  then  broke  down  in  his  part ;  and  another  kept 
up  the  appearance  of  madness  so  long  that  it  is  uncertain  to  this 
day  whether  he  was  really  insane  or  not.  When  a  man  feigns 
madness  so  perfectly  as  to  deceive  an  experienced  observer,  we 
may  hold,  I  think,  that  he  is  not  far  from  being  the  character 
which  he  represents  ;  for,  unless  there  be  a  foundation  of  real 
madness  beneath  the  feigned  phenomena,  there  will  be  some 
want  of  coherence  in  them  as  a  whole,  and  an  incongruity  with 
any  known  form  of  mental  disease. 

It  may  be  no  easy  matter  at  times  to  detect  partial  ideational 
insanity  where  the  patient  is  suspicious  and  tries  to  hide  it.  In 
the  countenance  and  bearing  there  may  be  some  sign  visible 
which  has  its  peculiar  interpretation,  and  there  are  sometimes 
peculiarities  in  the  dress  or  actions  which,  when  bottomed,  open 
up  a  secret  mine  of  madness.  "Where  there  is  no  such  guide  for 
the  inquiry,  it  will  be  necessary  to  examine  the  patient  carefully 
but  unobtrusively  on  all  matters  intimately  touching  himself; 
anything  singular  in  his  expressions,  or  any  obscure  references, 
being  watched  for  and  subsequently  followed  up.  If  he  seems 
to  pass  hastily  over  some  subject,  or  entirely  to  avoid  it,  he  may 
be  quietly  pressed  upon  it.  Heinroth  has  said,  and  it  is  popu- 


v.]  TEE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  INSANITY.  413 

larly  thought,  that  the  insane  will  not  deny  their  delusions, 
though  they  may  conceal  them  ;  but  this  is  by  no  means  true  of 
all  cases :  some  will  deny  their  delusions  positively,  or  even 
explain  them  away  as  jokes,  when  they  suspect  the  acknowledg- 
ment of  them  would  be  injurious.  If  the  patient's  self-love  is 
grievously  wounded,  and  he  is  made  extremely  angry,  he  may 
sometimes,  notwithstanding  his  suspicion,  reveal  his  hidden 
delusions.  Or  if  he  be  induced  to  write,  he  may  exhibit  the 
plainest  evidence  of  insanity,  though  he  has  managed  to  conceal 
it  successfully  through  a  long  conversation.  It  is  of  course 
necessary  to  institute  careful  inquiry  into  the  previous  history, 
in  order  to  ascertain  whether  there  is  any  hereditary  taint,  and 
what  degree  of  it ;  whether  there  has  been  any  previous  attack 
of  insanity,  and  whether  there  has  been  any  observed  change 
of  character  and  habit,  especially  after  some  efficient  cause  of 
insanity.  It  will  sometimes  happen  that  a  patient  at  the  outset 
suspects  that  he  may  be  thought  mad,  and  is  earnest  and  vehe- 
ment in  accounting  for  his  morbid  feelings,  and  at  great  pains  to 
convince  others  that  he  is  not  mad. 

It  is  usually  easy  enough  to  recognise  melancholia,  as  patients 
afflicted  w'ith  it  do  not  care  to  conceal  their  unhappiness  and 
their  delusions.  Sometimes,  however,  a  patient  having  des- 
perate homicidal  and  suicidal  impulses  will  not  only  conceal 
but  positively  deny  their  existence,  in  order  to  throw  those  about 
him  off  their  guard,  and  to  get  the  means  of  indulging  his  morbid 
propensities  ;  and  instances  have  happened  in  which  this  simu- 
lation of  sanity  has  been  successful,  and  homicide  or  suicide  has 
been  the  result.  Here  a  lawyer  might  argue  that  the  deliberate 
concealment  of  the  morbid  impulse  was  ample  proof  of  a  know- 
ledge of  its  nature,  of  a  consciousness  that  it  was  wrong,  and  there 
would  be  reason  in  the  argument ;  but  when  he  proceeds  to  the 
further  conclusion  that  the  act  is  therefore  a  crime,  and  the  doer 
of  it  fully  responsible,  it  is  not  a  logical  inference,  but  a  theo- 
retical presumption,  unfounded  and  unphilosophical.  It  con- 
founds consciousness  of  an  impulse  or  act  with  power  of  will 
over  it,  and  ignores  the  most  dangerous  and  the  most  lamentable 
form  of  insanity.  When  a  patient  has  once  exhibited  homicidal 
impulse,  it  is  necessary  to  observe  him  carefully  for  a  consider- 
able time  before  coming  to  the  conclusion  that  it  has  left  him  : 


414  THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

when  a  favourable  occasion  offers,  at  an  unexpected  moment,  the 
horrible  propensity,  latent  for  some  time  and  seemingly  extinct, 
may  burst  forth  in  violent  action. 

A  question  sometimes  arises  in  civil  and  criminal  trials  as  to 
the  distinction  between  eccentricity  and  insanity,  the  attempt 
perhaps  being  made  to  prove  an  eccentric  person  to  be  insane, 
or  to  prove  an  insane  person  to  be  only  eccentric.  Now  between 
genuine  eccentricity  of  character  and  insanity  there  is  a  wide 
difference ;  the  confounding  of  them  can  only  proceed  from  a 
slavish  conformity  to  that  fashion  of  thought  and  action  through 
which  the  original  man  of  any  epoch  is  so  apt  to  be  thought 
mad.  The  truly  eccentric  man  has  a  strong  individuality,  which 
is  expressed  in  all  his  doings,  and  stamps  them  clearly ;  he  has 
but  little  vanity,  for  he  is  emancipated  from  vulgar  prejudice, 
and  heeds  not  the  world's  praise  or  censure ;  he  knows  that 
the  world  has  ever  censured  great  works  at  their  birth,  and 
would  gladly  have  uprooted  them  during  their  early  growth,  and 
is  not  therefore  greatly  moved  by  its  multitudinous  outcry ;  he 
has  broad  and  original  views  and  great  moral  courage  ;  he  differs 
from  the  majority,  perhaps,  because  he  has  outgrown  the  habits 
and  superstitions  to  which  it  is  in  bondage.  Such  a  man  has 
nothing  insane  about  him,  nor  is  he  ever  likely  to  become  insane. 
There  is,  however,  a  weak  affectation  of  eccentricity  which  is  not 
unlikely  to  end  in  madness :  "  with  it  are  infected  certain  feeble- 
minded beings,  often  badly  bred  or  badly  trained,  who  are  empty 
of  any  true  individuality,  but  inflated  with  an  excessive  vanity ; 
who  have  a  small  intellect,  which  they  use  in  the  service  of  their 
passions ;  who  do  silly  and  eccentric  things,  not  unconsciously 
as  the  spontaneous  expression  of  their  nature,  but  out  of  a 
morbid  craving  to  attract  notice ;  who  represent  a  condition  of 
mental  derangement  that  is  the  forerunner  of  insanity;  who 
when  they  are  not  given  up  to  sexual  excesses  are  often  mas- 
turbators." 

"When  called  upon  to  give  an  opinion  upon  a  presumed  case 
of  moral  insanity,  it  is  necessary  to  go  back  carefully  through 
the  previous  history,  and  to  search  for  any  efficient  cause  of 
mental  disease,  such  as  great  moral  shock,  or  physical  injury, 
from  which  the  vicious  acts  may  be  logically  traced  through 
changes  of  character,  feelings,  and  habits.  No  one  in  his  senses 


V,]  THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  INSANITY.  415 

would  assume  vice  or  crime,  however  extreme,  to  be  positive 
proof  of  insanity ;  to  connect  it  with  disease  it  must  be  traced 
back  through  a  chain  of  morbid  symptoms,  marking  the  existence 
of  a  cause  more  serious  than  evil  passion ;  it  is  important,  there- 
fore, not  to  confine  attention  to  the  prominent  symptom,  but  to 
traverse  carefully  the  whole  affective  life,  in  order  to  discover 
the  evidences  of  the  perversion  of  nature  detectable  in  a  case  of 
true  moral  insanity,  and  to  connect  the  morbid  change  with  an 
efficient  cause  of  disease.  It  is  most  necessary  also  to  have 
careful  regard  to  the  social  circumstances  of  the  person,  in  order 
to  give  their  proper  weight  to  the  supposed  indications  of  in- 
sanity. When  a  person  in  good  social  position  gets  into  the 
police-court  for  stealing  some  article  of  trifling  value,  a  suspicion 
cannot  fail  to  arise  as  to  his  mental  state  ;  and  as  a  matter  of 
fact  it  will  probably  be  found  on  examination  that  he  exhibits 
other  early  symptoms  of  general  paralysis.  In  another  case,  an 
unaccountable  perversion  of  feeling  and  conduct  may  be  finally 
explained  by  the  occurrence  of  epilepsy.  In  a  third,  perhaps  a 
strong  hereditary  taint,  hitherto  latent,  has  been  observably 
brought  into  mischievous  activity  by  recognisable  mental  or 
bodily  causes. 

There  is  no  difficulty  about  the  diagnosis  of  general  paralysis 
after  it  has  passed  its  earliest  stage.  "  It  is  not  always  easy  of 
diagnosis  before  the  physical  signs  appear ;  and  yet  a  man  may 
at  this  stage  get  into  trouble — get  into  the  police-court,  or  get 
married  foolishly — entirely  by  reason  of  the  disease.  It  is 
necessary  to  weigh  carefully  the  character  of  the  act — whether 
it  is  anywise  explicable,  or  is  motiveless  and  quite  unaccountable, 
to  mark  well  the  state  of  the  patient's  articulation  under  excite- 
ment or  after  a  sleepless  night,  and  to  attend  to  the  great 
exaggeration  and  general  extravagance  of  his  conversation  on  all 
matters  concerning  himself,  even  wfcen  there  is  no  fixed  and 
positive  delusion.  General  paralytics  in  the  early  stage  speak 
so  extravagantly  and  absurdly  regarding  things  which  they  have 
seen,  or  events  in  which  they  have  been  concerned,  that  an 
inexperienced  person  might  be  apt  to  put  down  the  whole  as  a 
delusion.  It  is  needful  to  bear  in  mind  that  there  may  be  some 
foundation  of  fact  in  what  they  say  of  themselves— that  they 
do  not  at  first  so  much  invent  as  outrageously  exaggerate.  It 


416  THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP.  v. 

is  needful  also  to  remember  the  alternations  of  calmness 
and  apparent  sanity  which  occur  in  the  early  course  of  the 
disease."* 


NOTE. 

In  an  excellent  chapter  on  the  Diagnosis  of  Insanity  in  the  Manual 
of  Psychological  Medicine,  Dr.  Bucknill  makes  the  following  remarks 
with  regard  to  the  mode  of  examining  a  patient : — "After  testing  the 
fundamental  faculties,  the  attention,  the  memory  and  recollection, 
and  the  judgment,  which  may  be  done  by  ordinary  conversation  on 
any  subject,  it  will  be  well  to  give  up  the  idea  of  any  metaphysical  or 
phrenological  system  of  mind,  and  to  conduct  the  further  examination 
upon  a  plan  laid  down  upon  the  active  duties  and  relations  of  life. 
The  patient  may  be  led  to  give  an  account  of  his  own  powers  of  body 
and  mind,  with  reference  to  health,  to  exercise,  diet,  and  study. 
Thousands  of  delusions  are  entertained  by  insane  people  upon  these 
subjects.  He  may  then  be  led  to  converse  respecting  his  possessions, 
his  means  of  livelihood,  and  his  hopes  of  advancement  in  rank  or 
property ;  such  conversation  will  open  up  the  delusions  of  pride, 
ambition,  and  acquisitiveness.  He  may  then  be  led  to  converse  of  his 
near  relatives  and  friends,  and  especially  respecting  his  birth  and 
parentage,  stress  being  laid  upon  his  belief  whether  his  parents  were 
his  actual  and  real  parents.  This  inquiry  will  tend  to  open  up  any 
delusions  respecting  imaginary  greatness,  and  any  perverted  emotions 
towards  those  who  ought  to  be  dear  to  him.  The  subject  of  religious 
opinion  may  then  be  introduced.  The  religious  devotions  and  exer- 
cises which  he  practises  may  be  inquired  into,  with  the  reasonable 
expectation  of  finding  insane  delusions  on  a  subject  which  touches  the 
deepest  sentiments  of  the  soul.  If  the  patient  is  an  educated  man,  it 
will  be  right  to  converse  with  him  upon  politics  and  science.  If  he 
can  stand  the  test  of  a  discriminating  inquiry  on  these  and  similar 
subjects,  he  certainly  cannot  be  the  subject  of  mania ;  and  if  he  has 
any  delusions,  he  must  either  retain  the  power  of  hiding  them,  or  they 
must  exist  in  some  obscure  corner  of  the  brain,  from  which  they  are 
little  likely  to  influence,  with  any  force,  the  opinions,  the  feelings,  or 
the  conduct." 

•  From  the  Author's  article  on  Insanity  in  Reynolds's  System  of  Medicine,  voL  ii. 


CHAPTER  VI. 
THE  PROGNOSIS  OF  INSANITY. 

"\T7HAT  danger  there  is  to  life,  and  what  probability  there  is  of 
*  '  recovery,  are  the  two  questions  of  almost  equal  moment 
which  press  forward  for  determination  in  any  case  of  insanity.  In 
respect  of  the  first  question,  it  may  be  said  that,  though  insanity 
certainly  does  upon  the  whole  reduce  the  mean  duration  of  life, 
and  much  more  so  in  its  recent  acute  forms  than  in  its  more 
chronic  forms,  yet  it  is  not  in  the  majority  of  cases  a  disease 
directly  dangerous  to  life.  General  paralysis  does,  however, 
pass  steadily  to  a  fatal  ending,  and  usually  within  two  years 
from  its  commencement  Now  and  then  an  instance  of  recovery 
has  been  mentioned,  but  it  has  seldom  been  allowed  to  pass 
unquestioned.  Both  acute  mania  and  acute  melancholia  some- 
times end  fatally  in  a  sudden  manner  by  exhaustion,  especially 
where  a  persistent  refusal  of  food  has  accompanied  continued 
excitement,  agitation,  and  sleeplessness ;  the  prognosis  in  such 
case  being  very  much  influenced,  for  better  or  worse,  according 
as  food  is  taken  or  not.  When  the  temperature  of  the  body 
rises  some  degrees  above  the  natural  standard,  it  is  a  sign  of 
bad  omen  ;  for,  though  it  may  not  indicate  an  immediate  fatal 
termination,  it  marks  increasing  organic  mischief  that  must 
before  long  end  fatally;  in  the  attacks  of  excitement,  for 
example,  which  occur  in  the  course  of  general  paralysis,  the 
temperature  rises,  falling  again  as  they  pass  off;  and  in  the 
recurring  attacks  of  excitement  in  some  cases  of  dementia, 
where  there  appears  to  be  an  actual  slow  softening  of  the  brain, 
advancing  by  periodical  starts,  the  temperature  will  rise  some 
degrees  during  the  exacerbations,  sinking  afterwards  to  its 
natural  standard.  It  would  cause  no  surprise  if  convulsions 
28 


418  THE  PROGNOSIS  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

ensued  during  any  of  these  attacks,  and  death  soon  followed, 
though  they  may  go  on  being  repeated  for  months  before  such 
an  end  comes.  Any  indication  of  motor  paralysis,  or  any  kind 
of  hybrid  epileptiform  convulsion,  or  even  a  recurring  subsultus 
in  the  muscles  of  one  arm,  is  of  evil  omen ;  but  an  attack  of 
genuine  epilepsy,  though  unfavourable  as  regards  the  prospect  of 
recovery,  is  not  so  as  regards  life.  Where  there  is  nothing  in 
the  disease  itself  to  directly  endanger  life,  the  patient  may  still 
die  from  exhaustion  when  a  persistent  steady  refusal  of  food 
has  not  been  overcome.  In  melancholic  patients  afflicted  with 
suicidal  impulse,  as  many  of  them  are,  an  unremitting  and 
watchfulcare  will  be  necessary  to  prevent  a  self-iuflicted  death. 

What  probability  there  is  of  recovery  in  a  particular  case  will 
depend  greatly  upon  the  duration  of  the  disease,  upon  the  cause 
of  it,  and  upon  the  form  which  it  takes.  As  a  general  rule,  the 
more  recent  the  outbreak  the  better  is  the  chance  of  recovery ; 
the  expectation  of  which,  when  proper  treatment  has  been 
adopted  from  within  three  months  from  the  commencement, 
is  about  four  to  one,  while  it  is  hardly  as  much  as  one  to  four 
after  the  disease  has  lasted  twelve  months.  Undoubtedly  there 
do  occur  instances  in  which  patients  recover  after  being  insane 
for  years,  but  they  are  exceptional :  when  a  pathological  habit 
has  been  thoroughly  established  in  the  mind,  it  continues  almost 
as  naturally  as  the  normal  physiological  habit.  The  hope  of 
recovery  is  entirely  gone  when  the  stage  of  secondary  dementia, 
incoherent  or  apathetic,  has  been  reached. 

Looking  to  the  forms  of  mental  disease,  it  will  be  found 
that  melancholia  is  the  most  curable,  acute  mania  coming  next 
in  order.  When  the  maniacal  fury  is  subsiding,  the  prospect  is 
good  if  the  patient  is  sad  and  depressed,  begins  to  inquire  about 
his  family,  friends,  and  business,  and  to  evince  other  signs  of 
a  return  to  his  former  feelings  and  interests ;  it  is  bad  if  the 
feelings  remain  unmoved  and  the  intellect  is  calm  in  its  disorder 
— if,  in  other  words,  there  is  evidence  of  the  organization  of 
disorder.  Even  the  disappearance  of  intellectual  derangement 
is  not  a  certain  sign  of  recovery  unless  there  is  a  return  to  the 
old  healthy  feelings,  and  the  patient  is  conscious  that  he  has 
been  insane  ;  if  this  happy  change  does  not  take  place,  a  recur- 
rence of  the  attack  may  be  looked  for.  And  a  periodical  recur- 


VI.]  THE  PROGNOSIS  OF  INSANITY.  419 

rence  of  the  attacks  is  of  extremely  unfavourable  augury ;  the 
attacks  becoming  longer,  the  intermissions  briefer,  and  the 
decline  to  dementia  being  steadily  certain.  A  day  of  depres- 
sion and  weeping  intervening  in  the  course  of  acute  mania  is 
of  good  omen;  but  when  attacks  of  mania  and  melancholia 
regularly  alternate,  the  prognosis  is  very  unfavourable. 

Chronic  mania  and  monomania,  once  they  are  established, 
allow  very  small  hope  of  recovery.  In  rare  instances  it  may 
take  place  under  the  influence  of  systematic  moral  discipline,  or 
in  consequence  of  some  great  shock  to  the  system,  which  may 
be  due  either  to  a  strong  emotional  affection  or  to  the  effects  of 
some  intercurrent  disease.  Where  there  is  a  fixed  delusion  in  a 
melancholic  patient  that  the  cause  of  his  misery  is  in  some 
external  agency,  the  prognosis  is  unfavourable;  but  it  is  more 
favourable  in  the  melancholic  who  attributes  his  suffering  to 
imaginary  backslidings  of  his  own.  In  like  manner  the  homi- 
cidal patient  who  believes  himself  the  victim  of  persecution 
seldom  recovers,  while  the  suicidal  patient  generally  does 
recover,  particularly  after  some  serious  and  all  but  successful 
suicidal  attempt.  In  moral  insanity  the  prognosis  is  bad  ;  the 
symptoms  commonly  indicating  the  tyranny  of  a  bad  organiza- 
tion. Acute  primary  dementia  is  in  most  cases  curable  by 
proper  treatment  applied  in  due  time. 

"When  insanity  has  been  slowly  developed,  the  prognosis  is 
less  favourable  than  when  it  has  been  of  sudden  origin.  The 
reason  of  this  will  appear  when  we  reflect  that  it  is  usually, 
when  slowly  developed,  produced  as  an  exaggeration  of  some 
peculiarity  of  character,  and  marks  the  establishment  of  a 
definite  type  of  morbid  action  of  a  chronic  nature;  but  that, 
when  suddenly  caused,  it  is  produced  by  some  severe  moral  or 
physical  shock,  and  may  indicate  no  more  than  the  disturbance 
of  the  mental  equilibrium.  For  a  like  reason  a  frequent  alterna- 
tion of  symptoms  of  active  disease  is  more  hopeful  than  a  steady 
persistence  in  a  particular  group  of  quiet  symptoms.  The 
popular  belief  that  hereditary  insanity  is  not  likely  to  get  well 
is  not  warranted  by  experience  ;  but  the  disease  is  more  likely 
to  recur  than  when  it  is  not  of  hereditary  origin.  In  the  acute 
mania  sometimes  produced  by  drunkenness  the  prognosis  is 
good ;  it  is  bad  in  those  cases  in  which  a  continued  steady 


420  THE  PROGNOSIS  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

intemperance,  associated  sometimes  with  hereditary  predisposi- 
tion, has  resulted  in  mental  weakness  or  dementia.  YvTien 
insanity  has  been  caused  by  habits  of  self-abuse  or  by  sexual 
excesses,  the  prognosis  is  unfavourable  in  all  but  the  earliest 
stages.  If  religious  excitement  purely  has  been  the  cause  of  an 
outbreak,  recovery  may  be  looked  for  with  confidence ;  but 
where  religious  display  is  the  garb  which  a  pride  or  vanity  of 
disposition  has  assumed,  the  outlook  is  very  unfavourable. 
Where  disease  of  brain,  or  injury  of  the  head,  or  epilepsy,  has 
been  the  cause  of  the  mental  derangement,  it  is  practically 
incurable  ;  but  where  it  occurs  during  the  decline  of  some  acute 
disease,  it  is  generally  curable.  The  prognosis  is  favourable  in 
hysterical  insanity ;  it  is  even  more  favourable  in  puerperal 
mania,  and  this  though  there  may  have  been  attacks  in  previous 
confinements.  Indeed,  when  two  or  three  previous  attacks  of 
insanity  have  been  recovered  from,  there  is  always  good  ground 
of  hope  of  one  more  recovery,  though  the  final  issue  will  pro- 
bably be  dementia.  A  decidedly  bad  symptom  is  a  fixed 
hallucination,  as  is  also  a  complete  preservation  of  bodily  health 
along  with  a  persistence  of  the  mental  disorder  :  when  there 
is  palpable  bodily  disorder,  as  digestive  disturbance,  anaemia, 
menstrual  irregularity,  there  is  good  hope  that,  with  the  restora- 
tion of  bodily  health,  the  mind  may  be  restored  also.  When 
insanity  is  associated  with  phthisis,  the  prognosis  is  unfavour- 
able both  as  regards  recovery  and  as  regards  life ;  diseases  of 
the  respiratory  organs,  among  which  phthisis  holds  the  first 
place,  are  the  diseases  most  fatal  to  the  insane  in  asylums. 

The  most  favourable  age  for  recovery  is  youth,  the  probability 
of  it  diminishing  with  the  advance  of  life,  and  few  recovering 
after  fifty :  as  many  as  86  per  cent,  of  males,  and  91  per  cent, 
of  females,  attacked  with  mania  under  twenty  years  of  age, 
recovered  at  the  Somerset  Asylum,  according  to  Dr.  Boyd's 
tables.  The  recoveries  among  women  exceed  those  among  men, 
owing  probably  to  the  frequency  and  fatality  of  general  para- 
lysis among  men. 

The  broad  conclusion  which  Dr.  Thurnam  came  to  on  the 
basis  of  his  careful  statistics  was  that,  "  as  regards  the  recoveries 
established  during  any  considerable  period — say  twenty  years — 
a  proportion  of  much  less  than  40  per  cent,  of  the  admissions  is 


VL]  THE  PROGNOSIS  OF  INSANITY.  421 

under  ordinary  circumstances  to  be  regarded  as  a  low  proportion, 
and  one  much  exceeding  45  per -cent,  as  a  high  proportion."* 
The  liability,  however,  to  recurrence  of  the  insanity  after  re- 
covery from  the  first  attack  cannot,  he  thinks,  be  estimated  at 
less  than  50  per  cent.,  or  as  one  in  every  two  cases  discharged 
recovered.  On  the  whole,  then,  he  holds  that  of  ten  persons 
attacked  five  recover,  and  five  die  insane  sooner  or  later.  Of  the 
five  recoveries  not  more  than  two  remain  well  during  the  rest  of 
their  lives  ;  the  others  have  subsequent  attacks,  it  may  be  after 
long  intervals,  during  which  at  least  two  of  them  die. 

In  concluding  this  chapter  I  cannot  forbear  remarking  that  in 
insanity,  all  question  of  the  intrinsic  nature  of  the  disease  put 
aside,  the  prognosis  is  often  materially  influenced  by  extraneous 
circumstances — the  behaviour  of  those  relatives  and  friends  of 
the  patient  who  are  most  nearly  interested  in  him.  It  admits 
of  no  doubt  that  in  some  cases  the  eager  impatience,  the  restless 
anxieties,  the  meddlesome  interference,  and  the  quarrels  of  friends 
thwart  the  best  efforts  of  the  physician.  Sincere  and  sound 
advice,  founded  on  experience,  is  not  adopted,  or,  if  adopted, 
not  steadily  followed;  meanwhile  that  time  in  which  there  is 
the  best  hope,  and  sometimes  the  only  hope,  from  treatment 
passes ;  and  the  period  of  recovery  is  delayed,  if  the  progress 
of  it  is  not  arrested.  It  is  not  an  unwarrantable  assertion  to 
make,  that  some  insane  people  have  owed  their  life-long  mental 
affliction  to  the  injudicious  conduct  of  those  to  whom  they  were 
most  dear. 

•  Oil  the  Statistics  of  Insanity,  by  J.  Thurnam,  M.D. 


CHAPTER  YIL 

THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY. 

TT  may  be  safely  said  that  in  no  other  disease  are  the  difficulties 
-*-  of  treatment  so  great  as  they  are  in  insanity ;  for  they  are  not 
only  difficulties  appertaining  to  the  nature  of  an  obscure  disease, 
but  they  are  increased  and  multiplied  by  the  social  prejudices 
attaching  to  it ;  by  the  frequent  concealment  and  misrepre- 
sentation, witting  and  unwitting,  on  the  part  of  the  friends 
of  a  patient ;  by  the  unsatisfactory  character  and  position  of  the 
institutions  especially  established  for  the  reception  of  insane 
persons ;  and,  in  some  measure  also,  by  the  tendency  of  recent 
lunacy  legislation,  which  has  suffered  not  a  little  from  popular 
panic  and  professional  philanthropy.  The  practical  result  of 
laws  eagerly  and  hastily  made  under  the  influence  of  popular 
excitement  and  clamour  has  unquestionably  been  in  some  re- 
spects prejudicial  to  the  true  interests  of  the  insane.  The  land 
has  been  covered  with  overgrown  and  overcrowded  asylums  to 
which  almost  the  whole  lunatic  population  of  the  country  has 
been  consigned,  while  the  greatest  difficulties  have  been  put  in 
the  way  of  the  early  treatment  of  insanity.  No  one  who  has 
had  experience  of  the  working  of  the  Lunacy  Acts  in  England 
can  feel  altogether  satisfied  with  the  results.  That  there  has 
been  a  steady  increase  of  1,000  patients  a  year  in  the  asylums 
of  England  and  Wales  during  the  last  fifteen  years  may  be  good 
evidence  of  the  close  supervision  exercised  over  them,  but  it  is 
not  convincing  evidence  that  all  has  been  done  which  can  be 
done  to  secure  the  best  medical  treatment  of  those  who  are 
curable  and  the  greatest  comfort  of  those  who  are  incurable. 

It  would  not  be  difficult  to  show  that  the  iniquities  practised 
upon  the  insane  in  olden  times,  the  countless  unnecessary  and 


CHAP,  vii.]  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  423 

cruel  sufferings  which  they  underwent,  originated  fundamentally 
in  the  shame,  horror,  and  dread  of  insanity  which  still  infect  the 
public  mind.  Whether  these  unjust  feelings  were  legacies  from 
that  ancient  superstition  which  regarded  an  insane  person  as 
tormented  with  an  evil  spirit  in  consequence  of  some  great  sin 
committed  by  him  or  his  parents,  it  is  needless  to  inquire  here  ; 
suffice  it  to  say  that  the  cruel  feelings  of  suspicion  and  fear  in- 
spired a  most  cruel  practice.  To  shut  the  insane  up  from  gaze, 
and,  if  possible,  from  memory,  to  be  rid  at  any  cost  of  their 
offending  presence, — that  was  the  one  thing  to  be  done,  and  fit 
implements  were  not  wanting  to  do  it.  Consequently  it  happened 
that  infinite  cruelties  grew  up  and  flourished  under  the  influence 
of  false  views  and  hostile  feelings  with  regard  to  them ;  and 
to  be  the  victim  of  the  most  pitiful  of  diseases  became  a  reason, 
not  for  undergoing  proper  medical  treatment,  but  for  enduring 
the  severest  punishments.  The  memory  of  this  iniquitous  past 
is  thought  to  justify,  and  certainly  strengthens,  the  public 
jealousy  of  asylums  and  those  who  superintend  them  now  ;  they 
are  weighted  with  an  inherited  odium ;  and  a  stringent  legisla- 
tion, designed  to  mitigate  the  uneasiness  of  the  public  conscience 
on  account  of  the  real  horror  of  the  insane  which  is  still  felt,  and 
to  condone  past  sins,  does  not  conduce  altogether  to  their  best 
interests. 

It  is  by  no  means  an  unnecessary  thing  to  watch  carefully 
any  public  action  taken  in  regard  to  the  insane ;  for  it  is  very 
certain  that  the  people  have  not  been  in  times  past,  and  are 
not  now,  their  true  friends  :  the  vulgar  fear  or  horror  of  them 
has  always  prevented  that,  and  the  social  disgrace  thought  to 
attach  to  insanity  still  prevents  a  genuine  reform  of  opinion. 
How  often  did  Pinel  appeal,  and  appeal  in  vain,  to  the  authorities 
before  he  was  permitted  to  make  the  experiment  of  removing 
the  chains  from  a  few  lunatics,  and  of  treating  them  with  kind-* 
ness  and  consideration  !  Against  what  an  embattled  phalanx  of 
obstructive  prejudices,  selfish  indifference,  and  interested  opposi- 
tion did  the  humane  system  of  treatment,  the  conception  and 
realization  of  which  were  not  with  the  people  but  in  spite  of 
them,  win  its  slow  way  to  general  adoption  in  this  country ! 
A  few  earnest  members  of  the  medical  profession,  inspired  by 
benevolent  feeling,  but  little  aided  from  without,  clung  to 


424  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

the  drooping  standard,  and,  animated  with  firm  conviction  and 
nerved  by  a  sublime  determination,  bore  it  onward  to  tri- 
umphant victory.  What  a  terrible  outcry  is  now  raised  by  an 
alarmed  and  angry  public  when  some  poor  madman  who  has 
committed  homicide  in  a  paroxysm  of  his  frenzy  is  permitted  to 
pass  the  remainder  of  his  unhappy  life  in  confinement  instead 
of  being  hanged  forthwith !  How  many  veritable  lunatics  are 
year  after  year  executed  in  obedience  to  ignorant  and  unrighteous 
judgments  inspired  by  the  popular  prejudice  !  When  the  super- 
intendent or  proprietor  of  an  asylum  sends  a  few  of  his  patients 
to  the  seaside,  to  reside  there  for  a  short  time,  how  frequently 
does  it  happen  that  the  whole  neighbourhood  rises  in  rebellion, 
and  hastens  to  protest  against  the  outrage  thought  to  be  practised 
upon  it !  And  when  the  protest  has  been  unsuccessful,  with 
what  a  singular  consideration  does  this  public,  so  eagerly  cen- 
sorious of  those  who  have  the  difficult  charge  of  the  insane, 
behave  with  regard  to  them  :  it  stares  at  them,  points  at  them, 
perhaps  follows  them  at  a  distance,  as  they  take  their  walks, 
exactly  as  if  they  were  so  many  wild  beasts,  and  no  longer 
brothers,  sisters,  fathers,  and  mothers !  To  be  a  lunatic,  as  public 
sentiment  goes,  is  to  be  cut  off  socially  from  humanity.  With 
such  feeling  prevalent  with  regard  to  the  insane,  can  it  be 
thought  possible  that  the  treatment  at  present  sanctioned  by 
general  approbation  should  be  the  most  just  and  humane 
possible  ?  The  feeling  is  one  that  cannot  be  justified,  and  the 
system  which  it  inspires  cannot  be  just.  That  system  is  the 
system  of  indiscriminate  sequestration — of  locking  up  a  person 
in  an  asylum  simply  because  he  is  mad. 

Now  I  believe  this  practice  to  spring  out  of  an  unjust  feeling, 
as  already  said,  and  to  be  founded  on  a  false  principle,  as  I  shall 
now  endeavour  to  show.  The  principle  which  guides  the  present 
practice  is  that  an  insane  person,  by  the  simple  warrant  of  his 
insanity,  should  be  shut  up  in  an  asylum,  the  exceptions  being 
made  of  particular  cases.  This  I  hold  to  be  an  erroneous  prin- 
ciple. The  true  principle  to  guide  our  practice  should  be  this, — 
that  no  one,  sane  or  insane,  should  ever  be  entirely  deprived  of 
his  liberty,  unless  for  his  own  protection  or  for  the  protection 
of  society.  Therefore,  instead  of  acting  on  the  general  principle 
of  confining  the  insane  in  asylums,  and  making  the  particular 


vii.]  THE  TSXA3XSST  OF  INSANITY.  425 

exceptions,  we  ought  to  act  upon  the  general  principle  of 
depriving  no  one  of  his  liberty,  and  of  then  making  the  nume- 
rous exceptions  which  will  undoubtedly  be  necessary  in  the 
cases  of  insane  persons,  as  in  the  cases  of  criminals.  We 
imprison  criminals  in  order  to  punish  them,  to  reform  them  if 
possible,  and  to  protect  society  from  their  vices :  in  dealing  with 
the  insane,  who  are  suffering  from  disease,  there  can  be  no 
question  of  punishment,  but  we  confine  them  in  order  to  apply 
proper  means  of  treatment,  and  to  cure  them,  if  possible ;  and, 
secondly,  to  protect  themselves  and  society  from  their  violence. 
If  any  one  says  that,  on  the  admission  of  these  principles,  the 
practical  result  as  regards  the  insane  would  be  very  much  what 
it  is  now — for  they  would  practically  embrace  so  many  of  them 
that  the  exceptions  would  be  few — I  question  the  assertion  • 
and  I  venture  to  assert  in  opposition  to  it,  that  there  are  many 
chronic  and  incurably  insane  persons,  neither  dangerous  to  them- 
selves nor  to  others,  who  are  at  present  confined  in  asylums, 
and  who  might  very  well  be  at  large.  But  they  are  kept  in 
asylums  because  they  have  been  once  put  into  them ;  because  it 
is  sometimes  desirable  that  their  existence  should  not  be  known 
to  the  world ;  because  they  cost  less  there  than  they  would  if  in 
private  houses  :  because  they  are  well  taken  care  of  there  ;  because 
it  is  heedlessly  taken  for  granted  that  it  is  no  injustice  to  confine 
them  thus  so  long  as  they  are  mad;  and  for  many  other  like 
reasons.  But  the  fundamental  reason  which  inspires  all  these 
other  reasons,  and  without  which  they  would  want  firm  root,  is, 
that  the  world  has  grown  to  the  fashion  of  thinking  that  madmen 
are  to  be  sequestrated  in  asylums,  and  cannot  now,  with  every 
desire  to  be  sincere  and  unbiassed,  conceive  the  possibility  of  a 
different  state  of  things.  Even  those  devoted  men  who  laboured 
so  well  to  effect  the  abolition  of  restraint  within  asylums  never 
dreamt  of  the  abolition  of  the  restraint  of  asylums. 

I  know  well  the  objections,  some  fanciful  and  some  weighty, 
that  may  be  made  to  the  doctrine  just  propounded.  It  may  be 
said  that  some  insane  persons  go  on  very  well  in  asylums  who 
would  go  on  very  badly  out  of  them,  and  that  it  is  not  possible 
to  say  exactly  whether  an  insane  person  is  dangerous  or  not. 
The  answer  to  that  as  an  objection  to  the  principle  is  threefold : 
— First,  that  there  are  some  insane  persons  at  any  rate  to  whom 


426  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

it  does  not  apply,  some,  however  few  they  may  be  assumed  to 
be,  of  whom  it  can  be  said,  with  as  much  certainty  as  it  can  be 
said  of  any  experience  in  nature,  that  they  are  not,  and  never 
will  be,  dangerous  to  themselves  or  others ;  secondly,  that  it  is 
not  true  that  the  difficulty  or  impossibility  is  so  great  and  wide 
as  assumed  by  the  objection,  for  practically  there  is  no  more 
difficulty  to  an  experienced  person  in  deciding  that  a  patient  is 
not  dangerous  to  himself  or  others  than  in  deciding  that  he  is 
thus  dangerous,  which  is  a  thing  which  every  physician  who  has 
to  do  with  cases  of  insanity  must  constantly  do,  and  which,  with 
a  few  exceptions,  he  feels  that  he  can  do  with  perfect  confidence  ; 
and,  thirdly,  that  the  objection  might  be  valid  if  it  were  proposed 
to  leave  the  insane  not  in  asylums  without  any  sort  of  care  and 
control,  which  never  was  proposed,  and  that  its  whole  force, 
therefore,  lies  in  an  assumption  which  is  an  unfounded  one% 
Another  objection  to  the  liberation  advocated  will  be,  that  the 
insane  in  private  houses  will  not  be  so  well  cared  for  as  they  are, 
nor  have  any  more  comfort  than  they  now  have,  in  well  con- 
ducted asylums.  The  quarter  from  which  this  objection  is  urged 
taints  it  with  suspicion :  I  never  heard  it  put  forward  but  by 
those  who  are  interested  in  the  continuance  of  the  present  state 
of  things.  Those  who  make  it  appear  to  fail  entirely  to  appre- 
ciate the  strength  of  the  passion  for  liberty  which  there  is  in 
the  human  breast;  and  as  I  feel  most  earnestly  that  I  should 
infinitely  prefer  a  garret  or  a  cellar  for  lodgings,  with  bread  and 
"water  only  for  food,  than  to  be  clothed  in  purple  and  fine  linen 
and  to  fare  sumptuously  every  day  as  a  prisoner,  I  can  well 
believe  that  all  the  comforts  which  the  insane  person  has  in  his 
captivity  are  but  a  miserable  compensation  for  his  entire  loss  of 
liberty, — that  they  are  petty  things  which  weigh  not  at  all  against 
the  mighty  suffering  of  a  life-long  imprisonment.  I  would  put 
it  to  those  who  lay  stress  on  the  comforts  of  asylums,  whether 
they  sufficiently  consider  the  discomforts  of  them,  apart  from  the 
imprisonment,  which  they  are  by  the  nature  of  the  case.  Is  it 
not  a  common  thing  to  hear  from  an  insane  person  bitter  com- 
plaints of  the  associations  which  he  has  in  the  asylum,  and  of 
the  scenes  of  which  he  is  an  unwilling  witness — scenes  which 
cannot  fail  to  occur,  notwithstanding  the  best  classification, 
where  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  madness  are  congregated 


vii. ]  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  427 

together?  What,  again,  can  be  conceived  more  afflicting  to  a 
man  who  has  any  intelligence  and  sensibility  left,  than  the 
vulgar  tyranny  of  an  ignorant  attendant — a  tyranny  which  the 
best  management  cannot  altogether  prevent  in  a  large  asylum  ? 
And  I  might  go  on  to  enumerate  many  more  of  the  unpreventible 
miseries  of  life  in  an  asylum  which,  when  superintendent  ol 
one,  forced  themselves  painfully  upon  my  attention,  and  often 
made  me  sick  at  heart  Those  who  advocate  and  defend  the 
present  asylum  system  should  not  overlook  these  disadvantages ; 
they  should  not  forget  that  there  is  one  point  of  view  from  which 
they  who  organize,  superintend,  and  act,  regard  the  system, 
and  that  there  is  another  point  of  view  from  which  those  who 
are  organized,  superintended,  and  suffer,  view  it.  It  is  natural 
and  justifiable  for  one  who  has  brought  into  excellent  order  a 
large  institution,  and  holds  by  his  controlling  mind  its  different 
parts  in  well-balanced  movement,  to  feel  proud  of  his  work,  and 
to  contemplate  with  satisfaction  the  thorough  organization  of  the 
whole ;  but  he  should  surely  take  much  heed  lest  that  very  pride 
of  success  and  the  strong  interest  which  he  feels  blind  him  to  its 
demerits.  This  cannot  fail  to  be  more  or  less  so,  human  nature 
being  what  it  is :  should  not  a  man  most  distrust  himself  when 
he  is  most  satisfied  with  himself?  Have  not  the  most  grinding 
tyrannies  which  the  world  has  ever  seen  been  the  best  organ- 
ized ?  It  is  necessary  to  pause  before  accepting  this  argument 
of  the  comforts  of  asylums  from  those  who  superintend  or 
keep  them :  the  most  sincere  person  cannot  help  being  uncon- 
sciously biassed  in  such  case.  I  am  not  ignorant,  however,  of 
the  fact  that  there  are  some  chronic  lunatics  who  have  been  in 
asylums  for  so  many  years  that  it  would  be  no  kindness  now  to 
remove  them — who  have  indeed  so  grown  to  the  habit  of  their 
lives  that  it  would  be  cruel  to  make  any  change  ;  but  I  hold  that 
to  be  no  argument  for  subjecting  any  one  else  to  the  same  treat- 
ment in  order  to  bring  about  the  same  result :  it  is  not  the  past 
condition  but  the  future  welfare  of  the  insane  that  is  the  matter 
in  hand.  Human  nature  is  so  constituted  that  it  grows  to  the 
conditions  of  life  in  which  it  is  placed ;  but  every  one  would 
admit  it  to  be  a  poor,  argument  in  favour  of  unjust  confinement 
in  prisons,  that  a  prisoner  unjustly  confined  for  years  has  been 
very  unhappy  when  released,  and  has  prayed  to  be  sent  back 


428  TEE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

to  his  cell,  and  to  the  mice  "with  which  he  had  made  friends 
there.  Another  objection  will  be,  that  if  you  subject  a  patient  to 
systematic  control  outside  an  asylum,  you  do  actually  deprive 
him  of  his  liberty  quite  as  much  as  by  putting  him  into  an 
asylum.  Suppose  this  were  granted,  it  is  still  open  to  us  to 
maintain  that  he  would  be  happier  amongst  sane  people,  and 
under  the  circumstances  of  private  life,  than  when  surrounded 
by  all  degrees  and  kinds  of  lunacy,  and  subjected  to  the  mono- 
tonous routine  and  oppressive  regulations  of  an  asylum.  But  I 
do  not  admit  the  justice  of  the  objection.  Let  it  be  clearly 
understood  that  I  am  not  now  advocating  the  placing  an  insane 
patient  alone  in  a  cottage  with  one  or  two  attendants ;  in  such 
case  I  readily  admit  that  he  is  subjected  to  the  most  odious 
kind  of  tyranny,  and  to  a  deprivation  of  liberty  in  its  worst  form 
— that  he  would  be  a  thousand  times  better  off  in  a  well-con- 
ducted asylum,  and  certainly  could  not  be  worse  off  in  the  worst 
asylum.  I  am  arguing  distinctly  in  favour  of  placing  certain 
chronic  insane  persons  in  private  families,  where  after  a  time 
they  become  truly  a  part  of  the  family,  and  are  considered  in. 
all  its  arrangements,  not  otherwise  than  as  a  member  of  it 
afflicted  with  some  incurable  bodily  disease  woiild  be.  In  such 
case  the  loss  of  liberty  is  by  no  means  equal  to  that  in  an 
asylum,  where  the  occasional  indulgences  of  a  certain  freedom 
granted  only  serve  to  lighten  up  the  present  misery  and  to  deepen 
the  gloom  of  the  outlook  into  the  future. 

All  this,  it  may  be  said,  is  plausible  in  theory ;  but,  practically, 
what  is  the  actual  condition  of  patients  in  private  dwellings  ? 
Undoubtedly  their  condition  in  past  years  has  not  been  what  it 
should  be ;  no  thought  has  been  given  to  it  by  anybody ;  and 
they  have  suffered  from  the  erroneous  views  concerning  insanity 
which  have  prevailed  in  the  public  mind.  But  the  same  thing 
happened  in  asylums  at  one  time.  They  were  abodes  of  cruel 
suffering  to  the  patients  ;  and  many  people,  not  wanting  in  kind 
feeling,  thought  that  they  must  continue  so  by  the  nature  of  the 
case.  But  they  are  no  longer  so  now  ;  in  them  more  enlightened, 
views  with  regard  to  insanity  arose  and  spread,  and  a  great  prac- 
tical reform  has  been  effected,  the  completeness  and  excellence 
of  which  have  become  a  positive  difficulty  in  the  way  of  any 
further  reform  in  the  treatment  of  the  insane.  Is  there,  then, 


vzi.]  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  429 

let  it  be  demanded,  any  insurmountable  reason  why  similarly 
enlightened  views  should  not  be  inculcated  on  those  who  desire 
to  receive  single  patients  into  their  houses,  and  a  similar  bene- 
ficial reform  should  not  be  effected  ?  That  there  is  not  is  shown 
satisfactorily  by  the  reports  of  the  Scotch  Deputy  Commis- 
sioners in  Lunacy  on  the  condition  of  the  pauper  insane  in 
private  dwellings  in  Scotland*  A  few  years  ago  these  persons 
were  in  a  wretched  state,  neglected  and  ill-treated  in  many  cases, 
and  in  no  case  having  the  care  which  their  disease  demanded. 
Now,  however,  all  this  is  changed  :  by  the  powerful  agency  of 
official  instruction  and  inspection,  systematically  exercised,  all 
who  have  to  do  with  them  have  been  penetrated  with  more  en- 
lightened views,  and  the  condition  of  their  charges  has  accord- 
ingly been  immensely  improved — indeed,  now  leaves  little  or 
nothing  to  be  desired.  The  former  evils  sprang  not  so  much 
out  of  deliberate  cruelty  as  out  of  want  of  knowledge  on  the  part 
of  those  who  had  concern  or  part  in  them. 

If  other  facts  were  required  to  strengthen  the  argument,  I  might 
point  to  the  condition  of  the  numerous  Chancery  patients  in 
England,  who  are  living  in  private  houses.  I  have  the  best 
authority  for  saying  that  their  condition  is  eminently  satisfactory, 
and  such  as  it  is  impossible  it  could  be  in  the  best  asylum. 
Every  patient  is  visited  once  a  quarter  by  one  of  the  Chancery 
visitors,  who  have  the  power  of  insisting  upon  his  removal  else- 
where, if  the  accommodation  and  treatment  are  not  satisfactory. 
]S"or  would  it  be  correct  to  attribute  the  success  in.  these  cases  to 
the  large  amount  paid  for  the  care  of  Chancery  patients ;  for,  in 
the  first  place,  though  this  is  great  in  some  cases,  it  is  not  so  in 
others,  not  being  indeed  so  great  as  would  be  demanded  for  their 
care  in  a  good  asylum  ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  the  experience 
of  the  Scotch  Lunacy  Board  shows  that  many  pauper  patients 
are  well  taken  care  of  in  private  dwellings  at  less  than  one  half 
what  the  cost  would  be  in  a  county  asylum.  The  question  is 
plainly  not  altogether  one  of  expense ;  the  more  it  is  candidly 
considered,  the  more  evident  it  becomes  that  its  solution  lies  in 
the  promulgation  of  enlightened  views,  and  in  the  will  to  realize 
them  in  practice. 

*  Eighth  Annual  Report  of  the  General  Board  of  Commissioners  in  Lunacy  for 
Scotland,  1866. 


430  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAF. 

No  one  acquainted  with  the  facts  would  deny  that  many  of 
the  single  patients  in  England,  who  are  not  Chancery  patients, 
are  satisfactorily  cared  for,  and  are  more  comfortable  than  they 
would  be  in  asylums.  In  the  village  of  Hanwell,  and  its  neigh- 
bourhood, there  are  several  single  patients  living  with  private 
families,  some  Chancery  patients,  and  others  not,  who  are  ex- 
tremely well  taken  care  of  in  every  regard  ;  what  insurmount- 
able impediment  is  there  to  that  which  is  done  successfully  in 
Hanwell  being  done  in  any  other  village  in  England  ?  It  would 
be  difficult  to  assign  any  such.  In  order  to  develop  this  system, 
however,  it  would  be  necessary  to  establish  more  frequent  official 
inspection;  for  at  present  the  single  patients  not  under  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  Court  of  Chancery  are  only  seen,  on  an  average, 
once  a  year  by  the  Commissioners  in  Lunacy ;  and  the  official 
policy  has  not  hitherto  been  to  correct,  improve,  and  develop 
the  system,  but  rather  to  discourage  and  abolish  it  as  a  perma- 
nent and  increasing  means  of  providing  for  the  insane.  "When 
official  views  and  practice  have  been  modified  and  brought  into 
conformity  with  the  stream  of  liberal  thought,  as  we  cannot 
doubt  that  they  surely  will  be,  and  when  arrangements  have 
been  made  for  a  systematic  and  more  frequent  visitation  of  single 
patients,  then  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  number  of  these 
will  rapidly  increase,  to  their  infinite  comfort,  to  the  pressingly 
needed  relief  of  our  overgrown  and  over-crowded  asylums,  and  to 
the  general  advantage  of  the  community. 

For  the  reasons  adduced,  I  cannot  but  think  that  future  pro- 
gress in  the  improvement  of  the  treatment  of  the  insane  lies  in 
the  direction  of  lessening  the  sequestration  and  increasing  the 
liberty  of  them.  Many  chronic  insane,  incurable  and  harmless, 
will  be  allowed  to  spend  the  remaining  days  of  their  sorrowful 
pilgrimage  in  private  families,  having  the  comforts  of  family  life, 
and  the  priceless  blessing  of  the  utmost  freedom  that  is  com- 
patible with  their  proper  care.  The  one  great  impediment  to 
this  reform  at  present  undoubtedly  lies  in  the  public  ignorance, 
the  unreasoning  fear,  and  the  selfish  avoidance  of  insanity.  "When 
knowledge  is  gradually  made  to  take  the  place  of  ignorance,  and 
familiarity  banishes  the  horror  bred  of  ignorance,  then  will  a 
kindly  feeling  of  sympathy  for  the  insane  unite  with  a  just 
recognition  of  their  own  interests,  on  the  part  of  those  who 


vii.]  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  431 

receive  them  into  their  houses,  to  secure  for  them  -proper 
accommodation  and  good  treatment ;  then  also  will  asylums, 
instead  of  being  vast  receptacles  for  the  concealment  and  safe- 
keeping of  lunacy,  acquire  more  and  more  the  character  of 
hospitals  for  the  insane ;  while  those  who  superintend  them, 
being  able  to  give  more  time  and  attention  to  the  scientific  study 
of  insanity,  and  to  the  means  of  its  treatment,  will  no  longer 
be  open  to  the  reproach  of  forgetting  their  character  as  phy- 
sicians, and  degenerating  into  mere  house-stewards,  farmers, 
or  secretaries.* 

Thus  much  respecting  the  chronic  insane  who  are  harmless 
and  incurable,  and  for  whom  the  aim  to  have  in  view  is  to  secure 
the  most  comfortable  provision  for  the  rest  of  their  lives.  It  now 
remains  to  speak  of  the  means  to  be  adopted  for  the  care  and 
treatment  of  the  insane  who  are  deemed  curable.  This  treat- 
ment is  moral  and  medical,  the  two  methods  being  properly 
combined  in  every  case.  Again,  it  should  be  specially  directed 
to  the  character  and  circumstances  of  the  individual  case  ;  it  is 
necessary  to  penetrate  the  individual  character,  in  order  to  in- 
fluence it  beneficially  by  moral  means,  and  to  investigate  care- 
fully the  concurrence  of  conditions  that  have  issued  in  insanity, 
in  order,  so  far  as  possible,  to  remove  them.  Not  the  least  of  the 
evils  of  our  present  monstrous  asylums  is  the  entire  impossibility 
of  anything  like  individual  treatment  in  them.  It  would  not 
be  putting  the  matter  fairly  to  point  out  the  absurdity  of  two 
medical  men  affecting  to  treat  really  seven  or  eight  hundred 
lunatics  in  an  asylum,  because  the  majority  of  them  assuredly  do 
not  require  any  medical  treatment ;  but  it  is  perfectly  fair  to 
call  attention  to  the  uncertain  chances  of  satisfactory  treatment 
which  the  small  curable  minority  have  under  such  circumstances. 
To  the  medical  officer  these  are  not  so  many  individuals,  having 
particular  characters  and  particular  bodily  dispositions,  with 
which  he  is  thoroughly  acquainted,  but  they  are  apt  to  become  so 
many  lunatics,  whom  he  has  to  inspect  as  he  goes  his  round  of 
the  establishment,  as  he  inspects  the  baths  and  the  beds ;  and 
the  only  person  perhaps  really  aware  that  each  of  them  has  an 

*  Of  this  reform  my  friend  Baron  JIundy,  M.D.  has  long  been  the  earnest  and 
unwearied  advocate,  having  devoted  to  it,  in  a  purely  philanthropic  spirit,  many 
years  of  energy,  and  a  great  part  of  his  income. 


432  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

individual  character,  is  the  attendant.  Herein  lies  a  reason  why 
the  best  possible  treatment  in  some  instances  undoubtedly  is  to 
remove  a  patient  from  an  asylum  to  the  care  of  his  own  friends  ; 
he  may  then  recover,  as  the  Positive  philosopher,  Comte,  reco- 
vered, and  as  others  have  recovered,  though  there  seemed  every 
likelihood  of  their  becoming  permanent  lunatics  in  the  asylum. 
Indeed,  I  cannot  help  feeling,  from  my  experience,  that  one  effect 
of  asylums  is  to  make  some  permanent  lunatics:  continually 
living  in  the  atmosphere  of  the  worst  lunacy,  certain  patients 
seem  to  become  impregnated  with  its  baneful  inspiration,  and 
after  a  time  sink  to  the  situation.  And  I  can  certainly  call  to 
mind  more  than  one  instance  in  which  I  thoroughly  believe  that 
the  removal  of  a  patient  from  an  asylum  was  the  salvation  of 
his  reason. 

In  dealing  with  insanity  it  is  before  all  things  necessary  that 
treatment  should  begin  early,  before  the  habit  of  a  definite 
morbid  action  has  been  fixed  in  the  mental  organization.  There 
is  reason  to  think  that  if  the  first  obscure  threatenings  were  duly 
appreciated,  and  the  proper  remedial  means  at  once  adopted,  many 
cases  of  insanity  might  be  arrested  at  the  outset.  But  the  mis- 
chief is  that  a  case  of  insanity  hardly  ever  comes  under  the  care 
of  those  specially  qualified  by  their  experience  to  treat  it  until 
the  disease  has  been  firmly  established,  and  the  hope  of  recovery 
save  from  gradual  and  protracted  means  is  gone  in  some  cases, 
and  all  hope  gone  in  others.  When  the  disease  is  well  estab- 
lished, our  treatment  must  not  be  rashly  vigorous  and  energetic, 
with  the  aim  of  effecting  any  sudden  revolution,  but  rather 
patient  and  systematic,  in  the  hope  of  a  gradual  change  for  the 
better.  While  in  other  diseases  time  is  reckoned  by  hours  and 
days,  it  must  in  insanity  be  reckoned  by  weeks  and  months. 

Moral  Treatment. — "  To  remove  the  patient  from  the  midst  of 
those  circumstances  under  which  insanity  has  been  produced 
must  be  the  first  aim  of  treatment.  There  is  always  extreme 
difficulty  in  treating  satisfactorily  an  insane  person  in  his  own 
house  amongst  his  own  kindred,  where  he  has  been  accustomed 
to  exercise  authority,  or  to  exact  attention,  and  where  he  con- 
tinually finds  new  occasions  for  outbreaks  of  anger  or  fresh  food 
for  his  delusions.  An  entire  change  in  the  surroundings  will 
sometimes  of  itself  lead  to  his  recovery :  if  the  patient  is  melan- 


vii.]  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  433 

cholic,  lie  no  longer  receives  the  impressions  of  those  whom 
having  most  loved  when  well  he  now  most  mistrusts,  or  con- 
cerning whom  he  grieves  that  his  affections  are  so  much 
changed ;  if  he  is  maniacal,  he  is  not  specially  irritated  by  the 
opposition  of  those  to  whose  acquiescence  he  has  been  accustomed, 
nor  encouraged  by  their  submission  to  his  whims  and  their 
indulgence  of  his  follies."  Travelling  may  be  recommended  in 
the  early  stages  to  those  who  can  afford  it,  in  order  to  secure 
change  of  place  and  scene  and  a  variety  of  new  impressions ;  or 
if  the  patient  is  not  fit  to  travel,  he  should,  in  most  cases,  be  re- 
moved from  his  own  home  to  another  residence,  where  he  may  be 
placed  under  the  firm  and  judicious  control  of  persons  of  some 
cultivation,  and  where  he  may  have  systematic  medical  treatment. 
The  practice  of  placing  insane  persons  alone  in  a  cottage  under 
the  control  of  one  or  two  vulgar  attendants  is  certainly  to  be 
condemned  except  as  a  temporary  expedient:  those  who  are 
permitted  to  take  on  them  the  very  responsible  charge  of  con- 
trolling those  who  are  unable  to  take  care  of  themselves  should 
assuredly  have  some  social  stake,  and  be  in  a  position  to  lose 
something  by  evil  behaviour.  If  neither  of  the  above  courses 
can  be  taken,  or  if  the  patient  is  furious,  or  desperately  suicidal, 
or  persistently  refuses  food,  it  will  be  necessary  to  send  him 
to  a  suitable 'asylum.  And  in  choosing  an  asylum  the  main 
guiding  principle  should  be,  other  things  being  equal,  to  select 
one  in  which  medical  treatment  is  a  real  feature. 

No  doubt  the  change  by  which  asylums,  formerly  in  the 
hands  of  non-professional  men,  who  kept  them,  as  hotels  are 
kept,  simply  for  profit,  have  been  placed  in  the  hands  of  medical 
men,  has  been  a  beneficial  change  ;  but  it  has  not  been  without 
corresponding  detriment,  nor  has  it  exhausted  the  possibilities  of 
reform.  There  is  not  in  a  medical  diploma  any  miraculous 
talismanic  power  capable  of  changing  human  nature,  and  of  pre- 
serving it  from  the  frailties  incident  to  its  pilgrimage  through 
life.  And  the  inevitable  tendency  of  making  any  one  the  medical 
proprietor  and  manager  of  a  large  establishment  is  to  absorb  his 
attention  and  energy  in  the  economical  management  of  it,  to  the 
neglect  of  his  function  as  physician  in  a  hospital  for  the  treat- 
ment of  disease :  the  medical  diploma  is  apt  to  become  a  mere 
29 


434  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

form,  to  be  obtained,  in  the  least  troublesome  manner,  as  an 
essential  "prerequisite  to  getting  a  licence  to  keep  lunatics,  while 
the  scientific  study  and  the  scientific  treatment  of  insanity  are' 
not  thought  of  at  all.  It  may  justly  admit  of  question  whether 
the  medical  profession  has  gained  anything  by  a  change  that 
has  had  such  a  result,  while  it  hardly  admits  of  doubt  that  the 
public  has  not  gained  as  much  as  it  might  have  done.  I  cannot 
help  thinking  that  it  might  be  to  the  advantage  of  the  public  and 
the  medical  profession  if  there  were  no  such  practice  as  now 
finds  exclusive  favour  in  England  of  making  medical  men  the 
proprietors  of  asylums.  Of  course  it  is  most  necessary  to  insist 
on  proper  medical  supervision  and  proper  medical  treatment,  but 
is  there  not  sufficient  reason  to  believe  that  these  might  be 
equally  well,  if  not  better,  secured  by  dissociating  the  medical 
element  entirely  from  all  questions  of  profit  and  loss,  and  allow- 
ing it  the  unfettered  exercise  of  its  healing  function  ?  It  would 
be  a  vast  comfort  to  physicians  practising  in  lunacy,  who  are 
now  forced  to  become  proprietors  of  asylums  in  order  to  have  a 
field  for  practice.  It  would  be  a  gain  also  to  the  public ;  for 
eminent  and  accomplished  physicians  would  then  engage  in 
this  branch  of  practice  who  now  avoid  it,  because  it  involves 
so  many  disagreeable  necessities. 

Let  who  will  keep  the  asylums,  it  is  necessary  that  they  exist. 
To  put  an  insane  patient  under  such  restraint  is  indispensable  in 
some  cases ;  it  may  be  the  only  way  of  adequately  exercising 
for  him  that  control  which  he  cannot  exercise  for  himself,  or  the 
best  way  of  so  exercising  it  as  to  promote  early  recovery  ;  and 
to  let  him  distinctly  understand  that  this  is  legally  done  will  of 
itself  have  a  beneficial  effect.  There  should  be  no  secrecy,  no 
deception  about  the  matter,  but  all  should  be  done  openly  and 
firmly,  in  the  spirit  in  which  an  act  of  obedience  is  inculcated 
upon  a  child,  and  in  any  case  inflexibly  insisted  upon.  The 
melancholic  who  finds  himself  in  an  asylum  has  a  real  grief  to 
alternate  with  or  perhaps  take  the  place  of  his  fancied  affliction, 
and  the  maniacal  patient,  feeling  his  wild  spirit  of  exultation  to 
be  rudely  checked  by  the  influence  of  a  systematic  control,  will 
often  have  more  sober  reflections  aroused. 
The  patient  having  been  removed  from  those  influences  which 


TIL]  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  435 

have  conspired  to  the  production  of  the  disease,  and  now  tend 
to  keep  it  up,  and  having  been  made  to  recognise  from  without 
a  control  which  he  cannot  exercise  from  within,  it  remains  to 
strive  patiently  and  persistently  by  every  inducement  to  arouse 
him  from  his  self-brooding  or  self-exaltation,  and  to  engage  his 
attention  in  matters  external — to  make  him  step  out  of  himself. 
This  is  best  done  by  interesting  him  in  some  occupation,  or  in  a 
variety  of  amusements ;  and  it  will  be  done  the  more  easily  now 
that  the  surroundings  have  been  entirely  changed.  The  activity 
of  the  morbid  thoughts  and  feelings  subsiding  in  new  rela- 
tions and  under  new  impressions,  more  healthy  feelings  may  be 
gradually  awakened ;  and  the  activity  of  healthy  thought  and 
feeling  will  not  fail  in  its  turn  further  to  favour  the  decay  of 
morbid  feeling.  If  there  is  some  fixed  delusion,  it  will  do  no 
good  to  enter  upon  any  systematic  argument  against  it ;  there 
would  be  almost  as  much  hope  of  an  argument  against  the 
east  wind  or  against  a  convulsion ;  but  by  engaging  the  mind 
in  other  thoughts  as  much  as  possible,  and  thus  substituting 
a  healthy  energy  for  the  morbid  energy,  the  force  of  the 
delusion  will  be  most  likely  to  abate,  and  finally  to  die  out. 
But,  although  it  is  of  no  avail  to  talk  against  a  delusion,  it  is  - 
important  to  avoid  assenting  to  it :  by  quiet  dissent  or  a  mild 
expression  of  incredulity  when  it  is  mentioned,  the  patient 
should  be  made  to  understand  clearly  that  he  is  in  a  minority  of 
one,  and  that,  though  a  person  in  a  minority  of  one  may  per- 
chance be  a  genius  in  advance  of  the  rest  of  mankind,  it  is 
infinitely  more  likely  that  he  is  a  madman  far  behind  it. 

Medical  Treatment. — A  truly  scientific  treatment  will  be 
grounded  upon  the  removal  of  those  bodily  conditions  which 
appear  to  have  acted  as  causes  of  the  disease,  and  to  be 
keeping  it  up,  and  upon  the  general  improvement  of  nutri- 
tion. The  morbid  sensations  in  different  parts  of  the  body, 
which  are  so  commonly  experienced  in  insanity,  often  spring 
from  some  real  bodily  disorder,  and  tend  to  sustain  the  de- 
lusion or  other  derangement  of  thought.  They  should  obtain 
the  careful  attention  which  they  deserve,  for  bodily  disease  is 
not  always  detected  easily,  and  is  sometimes  overlooked,  in 
the  insane ;  the  usual  symptoms  being  very  much  masked,  and 


436  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

they,  like  animals,  often  making  no  intelligent  complaint.  It 
is  necessary,  therefore,  to  pay  particular  attention  to  the  phy- 
sical signs  of  disease :  there  may  be  no  cough,  no  expectoration, 
when  the  stethoscope  or  the  thermometer  reveals  advancing 
phthisis. 

General  blood-letting  is  now  abandoned  in  the  most  acute 
and  seemingly  sthenic  insanity,  as  not  merely  useless  but  as 
positively  pernicious.  It  is  admitted  that  convulsion  of  mind 
does  not  mean  strength  of  mind,  and  is  not  likely  to  be  cured 
by  draining  off  the  life  that  is  in  the  blood ;  violent  symptoms 
may  certainly  be  reduced  for  a  time  by  blood-letting,  but  the 
disease  is  very  likely  to  become  chronic,  and  to  pass  into 
dementia.  In  some  cases,  in  which  there  appears  to  be  great 
determination  of  blood  to  the  brain,  a  local  abstraction  of  blood 
by  means  of  leeches  or  cupping  may  be  useful ;  it  should  not 
be  done  with  any  view  of  reducing  the  general  strength,  but 
with  the  view  of  withdrawing  blood  from  the  overloaded  vessels, 
and  of  thus  affording  the  opportunity  of  rest  to  the  struggling 
and  suffering  nerve  element.  In  such  case  the-  aim  is  to 
imitate  nature,  which  diminishes  the  quantity  of  blood  in  the 
brain  during  sleep. 

The  continued  application  of  cold  to  the  head  by  means  of  a 
douche  pipe,  or  a  shower-bath,  or  by  pouring  cold  water  upon  it, 
while  the  patient  lies  in  a  warm  bath,  is  sometimes  successful  in 
calming  excitement  and  in  procuring  sleep  in  acute  insanity  of 
a  maniacal  type.  The  warm  bath  alone,  taken  for  about  half  an 
hour,  has  a  decidedly  soothing  effect ;  and  some  have  thought 
its  efficacy  to  be  increased  by  the  addition  of  a  few  handfuls  of 
coarse  mustard,  whereby  a  general  redness  of  the  surface  of  the 
body  is  produced.  In  France  the  warm  bath  has  been  used  for 
eight  or  ten  hours  at  a  time  with  professedly  good  results ;  and 
Leidesdorf  of  Vienna  has  used  for  three  or  four  hours,  and  in 
many  cases  with  a  marked  tranquillizing  effect,  a  bath,  con- 
structed by  Professor  Hebra,  in  which  patients  may  be  kept 
night  and  day  at  a  definite  temperature.  It  is  obviously  neces- 
sary to  avoid  any  such  use  of  the  bath  where  the  pulse  is  very 
feeble,  and  where  there  is  anything  like  commencing  paralysis; 
and  it  can  be  of  no  avail  in  cases  of  chronic  insanity. 


vii.]  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  437 

The  shower-bath  or  the  cold  douche  may  be  administered 
with  advantage  in  some  cases  of  melancholia  where  reaction 
does  not  fail  to  take  place  properly  afterwards,  and  in  cases  of 
chronic  insanity,  with  the  purpose  of  rousing  the  patient  and  of 
giving  tone  to  the  system  ;  but  its  use  should  not  be  continued 
for  more  than  three  minutes,  and  it  should  not  be  with  the  aim 
of  producing  any  special  effect,  but  on  the  general  principle  of 
improving  the  bodily  health.  The  advocates  of  the  Turkish  bath 
have  vaunted  its  beneficial  effects  in  insanity,  as  in  every  other 
disease ;  but  no  disp.Hminfl.tinn  of  the  cases  in  which  it  is  useful 
has  hitherto  been  made.  I  should  be  disposed  to  put  more  faith 
in  the  use  of  the  Eussian  vapour-bath,  which  might  not  im- 
probably be  of  real  service  in  some  cases  of  mania  and  melan- 
cholia, where  the  skin  is  dry  and  harsh,  and  its  secretion 
disordered.  Packing  in  the  wet  sheet,  after  the  hydropathic 
fashion,  and  as  recommended  by  Dr.  Eobertson  of  the  Sussex 
Asylum,  is  undoubtedly  a  useful  remedial  means  in  some  cases 
of  acute  excitement ;  it  has  not  only  a  soothing  effect  of  itself, 
so  that  the  patient  will  sometimes  go  to  sleep  in  it,  but,  by 
keeping  a  restless  and  excited  patient  quiet,  it  enables  sedatives 
to  take  effect  when"  they  would  be  perfectly  useless  if  no  such 
means  were  used.  On  one  occasion  I  was  roused  hastily  to  see 
a  girl  who  had  suddenly  been  attacked  with  acute  hysterical 
mania,  to  the  great  consternation  of  the  whole  household,  and  to 
the  despair  of  the  medical  attendant,  who  could  not  get  her  to 
take  anything,  or  to  remain  quiet  for  a  moment  She  had  torn 
her  night-dress  to  shreds,  was  tossing  about  on  her  bed  cease- 
lessly, and  was  quite  incoherent.  She  was  immediately  packed 
in  the  wet  sheet,  and  a  cloth  dipped  in  cold  water  applied  to  the 
head;  and  when  this  had  been  done,  she  took  without  any 
difficulty  a  dram  of  tincture  of  henbane,  and  after  a  short  time 
slept.  In  the  morning  all  excitement  had  gone,  though  she  was 
confused  in  mind,  and  in  a  few  days  she  was  quite  recovered. 
The  wet  sheet  should  not  be  used  for  more  than  three  hours  at 
a  time,  and  should  be  changed  once  during  that  time.  Thus  it 
has  its  true  character  as  a  means  of  medical  treatment,  and  is 
not  abused  for  purposes  of  mechanical  restraint. 

Counter-irritants  are  not  much  used  in  insanity.     Schroeder 


438  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

van  der  Kolk,  however,  thought  he  had  seen  beneficial  results 
follow  the  application  of  strong  tartar  emetic  ointment,  or  of  a 
"blister  to  the  shaven  scalp ;  and  Dr.  Bucknill  recommends  croton 
oil  to  be  rubbed  into,  the  scalp  in  the  passage  of  acute  into 
chronic  insanity  or  into  dementia,  and  in  chronic  melancholy  with 
delusion.  I  have  seen  in  one  case  a  wonderful  temporary 
effect  produced  by  a  blister  to  the  nape  of  the  neck :  a  young 
lady  who  had  appeared  demented  for  months,  and  who  had  not 
spoken  during  that  time,  woke  up  out  of  her  usual  stupor  the 
day  after  a  blister  had  been  applied,  and  spoke  as  rationally  as 
she  ever  did  in  her  life ;  next  day,  however,  she  "was  much 
excited,  and  inclined  to  be  violent,  and  after  this  subsided  into 
her  mute  stupor  again.  The  same  experiment  was  repeated  on 
another  occasion  with  a  similar  result,  save  that  her  excitement 
and  violence  were  much  greater  than  on  the  first  occasion.  Not- 
withstanding the  marvellous  effect  of  the  blister  in  this  instance, 
an  effect  which  might  well  seem  to  indicate  a  valuable  therapeu- 
tical remedy,  I  have  not  been  able  to  satisfy  myself  of  much 
permanent  good  ever  having  been  done  by  blisters  or  setons  in 
insanity.  If  they  are  useful,  they  are  most  likely  to  do  good  in 
melancholia  with  stupor  and  in  acute  dementia. 

"After  errors  of  digestion  and  secretion  have  been  duly 
attended  to,  the  diet  of  the  insane  should  be  good  ;  and  it  will 
be  desirable  in  most  chronic  cases  and  in  many  acute  cases,  to 
allow  a  liberal  use  of  wine.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  an 
attack  of  insanity  might  sometimes  be  warded  off  by  a  generous 
diet  and  a  free  use  of  wine  at  a  sufficiently  early  stage.  It  is, 
at  any  rate,  a  truth  worthy  of  all  acceptation,  that  energetic 
antiphlogistic  treatment  in  the  course  of  insanity  is  energetic 
mischief.  Leeches  may  be  applied  to  the  head,  and  a  patient 
may  be  kept  on  low  diet,  in  order  to  subdue  maniacal  excitement, 
without  any  other  result  than  an  increase  of  the  excitement 
with  the  increase  of  exhaustion,  and  the  most  active  purges  may 
be  given,  and  given  in  vain,  to  overcome  an  obstinate  constipa- 
tion, when  brandy  and  beef-tea,  reducing  exhaustion,  will  subdue 
excitement,  and  a  simple  enema  will  produce  full  action  of  the 
bowels.  Active  purgation,  once  so  much  favoured,  is  now  quite 
eschewed  in  all  forms  of  insanity.  The  bowels  may  often  be 


vii.]  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  439 

regulated  by  dietetic  means  ;  and,  if  a  purge  is  needed,  a  dose 
of  aloes,  rhubarb,  confection  of  senna,  or  castor-oil,  will  answer 
every  purpose  ;  a  moderate  dose  of  the  latter  sometimes  succeed- 
ing where  the  most  drastic  purgatives  fail."  The  present  bodily 
state  of  the  patient,  and  the  history  of  the  causation  of  his 
malady,  must  be  weighed  in  determining  whether  wine  is  to  be 
given  or  not  in  the  most  acute  stage ;  in  cases  of  a  sthenic  type  it 
may  be  desirable  to  do  little  more  than  wait  patiently  until  the 
fury  of  the  storm  has  passed,  and  then  freely  to  give  support. 

Coming  now  to  the  more  purely  medicinal  treatment  of1 
insanity,  we  may  speak  first  of  the  virtues  of  opium.  This 
drug  is  particularly  useful  in  that  state  of  mental  hypersesthesia 
which  so  often  precedes  an  outbreak  of  insanity :  when  the 
mental  tone  is  so  changed  that  almost  every  impression  is  felt 
as  painful,  then  opium,  freely  given,  produces  beneficial  effects. 
"When  the  acute  symptoms  of  mania  have  subsided,  and  a 
gloomy  and  morose  mood  of  mind  comes  on,  which  in  some 
instances  heralds  recovery,  but  in  other  cases  a  recurrence  of  the 
attack,  then  is  a  favourable  time  for  the  judicious  administration 
of  opium.  It  is  certainly  useful,  but  has  undoubtedly  been 
over-praised,  in  cases  of  simple  melancholia,  when  it  should  be 
given  in  doses  of  one  or  even  two  grains  twice  a  day,  and  con- 
tinued steadily  for  weeks,  notwithstanding  an  apparent  want  of' 
success  at  first.  If  it  produces  constipation,  each  dose  may  be 
combined  with  a  grain  of  aloine,  or  with  two  or  three  grains  of  • 
the  extract  of  aloes,  or  with  a  quarter  of  a  grain  of  podophyllin. 
Where  there  is  a  fixed  delusion  of  some  standing,  opium  is  of  no 
use  except  as  an  occasional  expedient  for  procuring  sleep.  It 
may  be  given  with  benefit  in  the  mania  caused  by  intempe- 
rance, in  the  mania  or  delirium  of  nervous  exhaustion,  and  in 
puerperal  mania;  but  it  is  not  of  the  slightest  use  in  acute 
idiopathic  mania,  in  melancholia  with  stupor,  or  in  the  attacks 
of  acute  excitement  that  occur  in  the  course  of  chronic  mania 
and  general  paralysis. 

The  subcutaneous  injection  of  morphia  is  a  valuable  expedient 
to  have  recourse  to  where  there  is  a  refusal  to  take  medicine, 
and  frequently  operates  more  certainly,  quickly,  and  effectually 
than  opium  taken  by  the  mouth.  Not  more  than  a  quarter  of  a 


440  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP. 

grain  should  be  injected  to  begin  with,  the  quantity  being  sub- 
sequently increased,  if  necessary.  It  is  important,  however,  to 
bear  clearly  in  mind  that  neither  opium  by  the  mouth,  nor 
morphia  hypodermically  injected,  will  avail  to  quench  the  fury 
of  acute  mania,  and  that  successive  injections  of  morphia,  though 
followed  by  brief  snatches  of  fitful  sleep,  have  been  followed 
also  by  fatal  collapse  or  coma. 

In  cases  of  great  excitement,  maniacal  or  melancholic,  where 
it  is  advisable  to  give  opium,  large  doses  of  digitalis  sometimes 
produce  good  effects  in  tranquillizing  the  patient.  The  excite- 
ment abates,  and  the  pulse,  falling  in  frequency,  may,  by  repeat- 
ing the  dose,  be  kept  for  some  time  at  a  standard  below  the 
average.  In  the  attacks  of  excitement  which  occur  in  the  course 
of  general  paralysis  the  effects  of  digitalis  are  excellent ;  it  had 
better  be  given  in  doses  of  half  a  drachm  of  the  tincture  repeated 
two  or  three  times  a  day  than  in  doses  of  one  drachm  or  two 
drachms,  as  some  have  advocated.  Notwithstanding  the  present 
fashion  of  large  doses,  and  the  disbelief  in  the  cumulative  action 
of  digitalis,  I  hold  it  to  be  the  duty  of  a  good  physician  to  be  ex- 
ceedingly careful  in  his  administration  of  so  uncertain  a  drug. 
I  have  certainly  known  an  acute  maniacal  patient  to  drop  down 
and  die  in  collapse,  after  taking  repeated  large  doses  of  digitalis, 
whether  owing  to  the  mania  or  to  the  digitalis  must  remain 
uncertain ;  and  I  believe  that,  though  a  patient  who  has  taken 
large  doses  of  digitalis  may  be  safe  while  he  is  lying  down,  he 
is  sometimes  in  no  small  danger  of  fatal  collapse  if  he  starts  up, 
or  runs  about  in  an  excited  manner. 

Hyoscyamus  is  much  safer  than  digitalis ;  it  is  of  no  use  in 
small  doses,  but,  in  doses  of  a  drachm  or  two  drachms  of  the 
tincture,  it  is  a  valuable  sedative  in  insanity.  Hydrocyanic  acid, 
in  large  doses,  has  been  praised  as  being  of  wonderful  efficacy, 
but  it  has  no  specific  virtue,  and  it  appears  to  do  good  only  where 
there  is  some  disorder  of  the  stomach,  not  otherwise  than  as  it  does 
good  where  there  is  no  insanity.  Bromide  of  potassium  certainly 
appears  to  produce  good  effects  in  some  cases  of  insanity,  but  in 
others,  apparently  similar,  it  appears  to  have  no  effect  whatever. 
I  have  tried  it  in  cases  of  regularly  recurrent  mania,  moved  to 
the  experiment  by  the  knowledge  of  its  good  effects  in  epilepsy, 


VIL]  TEE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  441 

with  "which  recurrent  mania  always  seems  to  me  to  have  some 
close  relation  or  resemblance ;  and  sometimes  I  have  thought  it 
do  good  and  sometimes  to  be  quite  useless.  Further  trial  of  it, 
care  being  taken  that  it  is  not  adulterated,  is  certainly  desirable. 
"  Tartar  emetic  will  often  calm  for  a  time  the  most  furious 
maniac  through  the  prostration  which  it  produces,  but  it  does 
no  permanent  good,  and  its  'employment  for  such  purpose  is 
rather  a  relic  of  the  old  system  of  quieting  a  patient  by  some  vio- 
lent means  or  other  short  of  actually  killing  him.  If  mercury  be 
ever  useful,  and  not  miscliievous,  in  the  treatment  of  insanity,  it 
is  when  given  in  small  doses  of  the  bichloride  in  cases  that  are 
becoming  chronic,  or  where  there  is  a  suspicion  of  syphilis.  To 
administer  mercury  systematically  in  general  paralysis,  as  has 
been  done,  is  as  untenable  in  theory  as  it  is  undoubtedly  per- 
nicious in  practice." 

"In  all  those  cases  of  insanity  in  which  tonics  seem  to  be 
demanded  by  the  state  of  the  bodily  health — and  they  are  the 
majority  of  cases  at  one  period  or  other  of  their  course — iron  and 
quinine  may  be  given ;  and  one  of-the  best  ways  of  giving  them 
is  in  a  mixture  containing  quinine,  the  tincture  of  the  sesqui- 
chloride  of  iron,  and  chloric  ether.  In  some  cases  it  happens 
that  an  uncontrollable  diarrhoea  sets  in  and  carries  the  patient 
off,  nothing  availing  to  check  it :  acetate  of  lead  with  opium  and 
enemata  of  starch  and  laudanum  are  most  likely  to  be  useful." 

"  When  insanity  has  become  chronic,  or  when  fixed  delusions 
are  established,  there  is  small  hope  of  special  benefit  from  drugs. 
The  general  health  being  duly  attended  to,  a  systematic  moral 
treatment  will  be  best  adapted  to  restore  health  of  mind.  Where 
there  is  persistent  refusal  of  food,  it  must  never  be  allowed  to 
continue  so  as  to  endanger  the  bodily  health ;  and  if  persuasion 
entirely  fail,  then  the  stomach-pump  must  be  used  to  administer 
food.  Those  who  are  suicidal  should  be  carefully  watched  at 
all  times,  and  especially  so  on  getting  up  in  the  morning,  when 
the  thoughts  are  gloomy,  and  the  desperate  impulse  is  apt  to 
surprise  and  overpower  them.  The  monomaniac,  who  has  delu- 
sions that  he  is  watched  continually,  or  otherwise  persecuted, 
must  always  be  deemed  dangerous  to  others ;  for  at  any  time  he 
may  become  so  impatient  of  his  sufferings  as  to  make  a  fatal 


442  THE  TREATMENT  OF  INSANITY.  [CHAP.  VTI. 

attack  upon  his  fancied  persecutor.  Those  who  suffer  from  moral 
insanity  are  often  very  troublesome  to  deal  with  satisfactorily ; 
tut  it  will  be  worth  while  always  to  remember  that  one  unequal 
to  the  responsibilities  and  duties  of  the  social  position  in  which 
he  was  born  may  not  on  that  account  be  unequal  to  the  rela- 
tions of  a  much  lower  social  stratum."*  It  is  not  because  a 
person  insists  upon  degrading  or  ruining  himself  that  it  is  justi- 
fiable to  deprive  him  of  his  liberty  as  a  lunatic. 

*  The  quotations  are  from  the  Author's  article  on  "  Insanity,"  already  referred  to. 


THE  END. 


D.  APPLETON  &  OVS.  PUBLICATIONS. 


-AJSTD    EnSHL-^CRGKEID    EIDITIOIST. 


THE  WORLD  BEFORE  THE  DELUGE. 

BY  LOUIS   FIGUIER. 


J&.    3XTEW 

The  Geological  Portion   carefully  Revised,  and  much  Original  Matter  added, 
BT  HEITEY  "W.  BEI3TOW,  F.  E.  S.,  OF  THB  GEOLOGICAL  SUBVBY  OF  GREAT  BBiTAnr. 

Containing  thirty-four  f  nil-page  Illustrations  of  Extinct  Animals  and  Idea*  Landscapes  of 

the  Ancient  World,  designed  'by  Jiiou,  and  two  hundred  and  two  Figures  of 

Animals,  Plants,  and  other  fossil  Remains  and  Restorations. 

1  vol.,  8vo.    437  pages.    Beautifully  printed.    Cloth,  $6.00. 

"  The  text  of  this,  the  second  edition  of  M.  Figuier's  popular  work,  has  undergone  a  careful 
revision,  so  as  to  assimilate  the  phraseology  of  the  French  geologist  to  that  adopted  in  English 
Science,  as  far  as  this  could  be  accomplished  without  prejudice  to  the  author's  method  and 
reasoning.  Some  inaccuracies  which  had  crept  Into  the  previous  version  hare  been  rectified,  and 
statements  or  fact  upon  which  discoveries  subsequent  to  the  publication  of  the  original  work 
have  thrown  light,  have  been  corrected  or  remodelled,  so  as  to  represent  more  precisely  the 
present  state  of  scientific  opinion."  —  Extract  from  Preface. 

"This  work  is  written  in  the  most  entertaining  manner.  It  unfolds  the  history  of  the  world 
as  shown  in  geology,  from  its  supposed  gaseous  state  until  the  era  of  the  Noachian  deluge.  To 
the  student  of  geology  and  the  general  reader,  M.  Figuier's  work  will  prove  very  full  of  Interest 
*  *  *  It  is  a  good  book,  and  good  books  are  the  need  of  the  day."  —  New  York  Commercial 
Advertiser. 

D.  A..  Sc  CO.  have  lately  pioblisliecL, 

The  Harmonies  of  Nature;  or,  THK  UNITY  OF  CREATION.  By  Dr.  G, 
Hartwig,  author  of  "  The  Sea  and  its  Living  Wonders,"  and  "  The  Tropical 
World."  With  eight  full-page  drawings,  and  nearly  two  hundred  Woodcuts.  1 
vol.,  8vo,  406  pages.  Goth,  $7.50  ;  half  calf,  extra,  §10  ;  full  calf,  extra,  $12. 

The  Harvest  of  the  Sea.  A  Contribution  to  the  Natural  and  Economic  His- 
tory of  the  British  Food  Fishes.  By  James  G.  Bertram.  With  fifty  Illustra- 
tions. 1  large  voL,  8vo.  520  pages.  Cloth,  $7.50  ;  half  calf,  extra,  $10  ;  full 
calf,  extra,  $12. 

Homes  Without  Hands  :  Being  an  Account  of  the  Habitations  Constructed 
by  various  Animals,  classed  according  to  their  principles  of  Construction.  By 
Rev.  J.  G.  Wood,  M.  A.  F.  L.  S.,  author  of  the  "Illustrated  Natural  History," 
&c.  With  very  numerous  Illustrations,  engraved  on  wood  by  G.  Pearson,  from 
original  drawings  made  by  F.  W.  Keyl  and  E.  A.  Smith,  under  the  author's 
superintendence,  expressly  for  this  work.  1  vol.,  8vo.  Cloth,  $7.50  ;  half  c»lf, 
extra,  $10;  full  calf,  extra,  $12. 


D.  APPLE  TON  &  GO:  8  PUBLICATIONS. 


A    NEW    BOOK    BY    LOUIS    FIGUIER. 


THE  VEGETABLE  WORLD; 

BEING 

A  HISTOET  OF  PLANTS, 

i.  WITH  THEIR  BOTANICAL  DESCRIPTIONS  AND  PECULIAR  PROPERTIES. 

BY  LOUIS  FIGUIER, 

AUTHOE  OF  "THE  WOKLD  BEFOKE  THE  DELUGE." 

Illustrated  with  Four  Hundred  and  Forty-six  Engravings  interspersed  through  the 
text,  and  Twenty-four  full-page  Illustrations, 

Chiefly  3)rawn  from  Nature,  by  M.  FA  G  U^T, 

ILLUSTRATOR    TO    THE    BOTANICAL    COUESB     OP    THE    FACULTY    OF    SCIENCES     OF    PARIS. 

One  vol.,  8vo,  beautifully  printed.    584  pages.     Cloth,  $6.00 ;  Half  Calf, 
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"The  present  volume  maybe  considered  as  the  second  contribution  which  M.  Figuier  has 
made  toward  his  Tableau  de  la  Nature.  '  The  "World  before  the  Deluge1  contemplates  a  period 
in  the  earth's  history  when  its  natural  ornament  was  absent;  when  its  surface  was  an  arid  desert 
a  vast  solitude,  the  abode  of  silence  and  death.  Plants  preceded  animals  in  the  order  of  creation ; 
when  the  great  animals  which  preceded  men  were  created  by  the  wisdom  of  the  Eternal,  the 
earth  was  already  clothed  in  a  mantle  of  vegetation.  *  *  *  *  The  History  of  Plants 
which  is  now  submitted  to  the  reader  is  divided  into  four  parts : — L  The  Organography  and  Phys- 
iology of  Plants.  IL  The  Classification  of  Plants.  III.  The  Natural  Families  of  Plants.  IV. 
The  Geographical  Distribution  of  Plants." — Extract  from  Preface. 

"A  volume  which  furnishes  reading  of  the  most  attractive,  fascinating,  and  profitable  Mid, 
teaching  the  old  many  facts  far  from  familiar  to  them,  and  leading  the  young  into  fields  which 
the  study  of  a  lifetime  cannot  exhaust.  It  reads  as  though  it  might  have  been  originally  written 
in  English,  and  it  certainly  contains  more  information  upon  the  subject  of  which  it  treats  than 
any  other  single  volume  extant ;  and  this  is  imparted  in  so  agreeable  a  manner  that  the  work 
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praise  to  the  engravings  which  illustrate  and  ornament  the  work.  They  are  executed  in  the  best 
style."— JT.  T.  Times. 


33.  .A-.  &  Co.  liave  lately  ptiblislied., 

TJie  World  Before  tJie  Deluge.     By  Louis  Figuier.     A  New  Edition. 

Illustrated.     1  vol.,  8vo.     Cloth,  $6 ;  half  calf,  $8.60. 
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8vo.     Cloth,  $7.50. 
TJie  Harvest  of  the  Sea.    By  James  G.  Bertram.    Illustrated.    1  vol.,  8vo. 

Cloth,  $7.50. 


THE  ONLY  COMPLETE  AND  UNITOKM  EDITION, 


LORD  1ACAULATS  WORKS, 


KDITED   BY   HIS    SISTER, 


8  VoLi.,  larg«  8vo.   Price,  cloth,  $40.00  ;  half  calf  extra,  $56.00  ;  full  calf 

extra,   $64.00.    Beautifully  printed  in  largre  clear  type,  on 

thick  toned  paper,  with  a  fine  portrait  engraved 

on  steel  by  W.  Holl. 


In  preparing  for  publication  a  complete  and  uniform  edition  of  Lord  Macaulay's 
Works,  it  has  been  thought  right  to  include  some  portion  of  what  he  placed  on  record 
as  a  jurist  in  the  East.  The  papers  selected  are  the  Introductory  Report  on  the 
Indian  Penal  Code,  and  the  notes  appended  to  that  code,  in  which  most  of  its  leading 
provisions  were  explained  and  defended.  These  papers  were  entirely  written  by  Lord 
Macaulay,  but  the  substance  of  them  was  the  result  of  the  joint  deliberations  of  the 
Indian  Law  Commission,  of  which  he  was  President.  They  are  by  no  means  merely 
of  Indian  interest,  for  while  they  were  the  commencement  of  a  new  system  of  law  for 
India,  they  relate  chiefly  to  general  principles  of  jurisprudence,  which  are  of  universal 
application. 

The  contents  are  arranged  in  this  edition  as  follows :  Yols.  L  to  IV.,  History  of 
England  since  the  Accession  of  James  the  Second  ;  Vols.  V.,  VI.,  and  VEL,  Critical 
and  Historical  Essays,  Biographies,  Report  and  Notes  on  the  Indian  Penal  Code,  and 
contributions  to  Knight's  Quarterly  Magazine ;  VoL  V1LL,  Speeches,  Lays  of  Ancient 
Rome,  and  Miscellaneous  Poems. 

This  last  division  of  the  work  is  completed  by  the  insertion  of  the  Cavalier's  Song 
and  the  Poetical  Valentine  to  the  Hon.  Mary  C.  Stanhope,  two  pieces  which  were  not 
included  in  previous  editions  of  Lord  Macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

"Every  admirer  of  Lord  Macaulay's  writings  (and  their  name  is  legion)  will 
heartily  thank  Appleton  &  Co.  for  having  produced  this  elegant  edition  of  his 
works.  It  seems  almost  idle  to  say  any  thing  in  praise  of  the  great  historian  to 
the  American  reader,  but  we  cannot  forbear  expressing  our  admiration  of  the  physical 

as  well  as  mental  strength  so  manifest  in  his  diction  and  style But  it  is  not  our 

intention  to  write  a  critique  on  the  man  whose  memory  holds  so  prominent  a  place 
in  the  heart  of  the  reading  world.  The  volumes  before  us  should  fill  a  niche  in  every 
public  and  private  library  in  our  land." — Glen  Falls  Journal. 

"  His  writings  and  his  speeches,  arranged  in  chronological  order,  exhibit  the  devel- 
opments of  a  mind  always  more  or  less  powerful,  and  announce  the  extent  of  his 
reading  and  the  tenacity  of  his  memory.  His  contributions  to  the  History  of  British 
India  show  how  usefully  his  time  was  spent  during  his  sojourn  at  Calcutta." 

|Sf~  D.  Appleton  &  Co.'s  Descriptive  Catalogue  may  be  had  gratuitously  on 
application. 

D.  APPLETON  &  CO., 

PUBLISHERS,  BOOKSELLERS,  &  STATIONERS, 

&  &L5  Broadway,  JV.  T. 


D.  APPLET  ON  &  COSS  PUBLICATIONS. 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  THE  LATE  WAR: 

TEACED  FBOM  THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  CONSTITUTION  TO  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE 
8OUTHEEN  STATES. 


By    GKEOKG-K 
1  Vol.  12mo.    491  Pages.    Cloth,  Price  $2.50. 


"  In  writing  this  book,  I  have  endeavored  to  trace,  in  a  manner  which  I  trust  will 
be  intelligible  to  the  general  reader,  the  interior  course  of  the  long  controversy,  some- 
times active  and  again  much  subdued,  but  never  absolutely  at  rest,  between  the  North 
and  the  South.  It  was  my  purpose  to  make  known  whatever  the  facts  of  the  case 
should  of  themselves  indicate,  without  any  regard  to  party  interests  or  prepossessions. 
In  thus  presenting  a  sketch  of  the  progress  of  those  causes  which  led  to  the  Southern 
revolt,  it  will  be  seen  that  Slavery,  though  made  an  occasion,  was  not,  in  reality,  the 
cause  of  the  war." — Extract  from  Objects  of  the  Work. 


"It  is  one  of  the  books  needed  at  the  present  moment,  and  should  have  a  very  wide 
sale.  Mr.  Lunt  has  long  been  distinguished  as  one  of  our  most  able  editors  and  writers. 
He  has  had  opportunities  for  observation  not  surpassed  by  those  of  any  other  man. 
The  result  in  this  volume  is  most  valuable." — Journal  of  Commerce. 

"  The  ability  of  Mr.  Lunt  as  a  writer  and  his  accuracy  as  a  scholar  prepare  the 
reader  to  find  it  a  strong,  an  interesting,  and  a  valuable  historical  work.  It  is  all  of 
this.  Its  style  is  clear  and  compact,  its  array  of  facts  irrefragable,  its  reasoning  calm 
and  cogent.  We  most  cordially  commend  the  book  to  thinking  men  of  all  parties  as 
one  which  they  will  read  with  interest  and  instruction." — Eastern  Argus. 

"  This  book  is  precisely  what  its  title  imports.  Although  a  few  readers  may  dissent 
from  some  party  views  that  are  casually  advanced,  we  are  sure  that  no  one  can  take 
issue  with  a  single  statement  bearing  upon  the  real  question  involved  in  the  work.  The 
book  is  replete  with  instruction,  and  freighted  with  matter  for  serious  reflection." — 
New  York  World. 

"  This  is  what  we  want.  Mr.  Lunt  writes  well,  ably,  comprehensively.  It  is  the  best 
book  on  the  conservative  side  that  the  country  has  produced." — Boston  Post. 

"  A  very  remarkable  production ;  we  say  this,  not  only  with  reference  t»  its  high 
literary  ability,  unsurpassed,  we  really  think,  by  any  thing  that  has  lately  been  issued 
from  the  American  press,  but  in  view  of  the  author's  position  and  antecedent  social 
relations." — Philadelphia  Age. 

"  Mr.  Lunt  has  searched  authorities  and  precedents  carefully,  and  has  made  a  book 
that  will  be  read,  even  if  it  does  not  command  the  confidence  of  the  mass  of  the  peo- 
ple."—New  York  Commercial  Advertiser. 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 


A  STANDARD  BOOK  OF  REFERENCE. 


THE 


HOUSEHOLD  BOOK  OF  POETRY. 

Collected  and  Edited  by  CHARLES  A.  DAXi. 

Tenth  Edition.    Royal  8vo.     798  pages.    Beautifully  printed. 
Half  mor.,  gilt  top,  $6 ;  half  calf,  extra,  $7.50 ;  mor.  ant.,  $10. 


"The  purpose  of  this  book  is  to  comprise  within  the  bounds  of  a  single  volume  whatever  is  truly 
beautiful  and  admirable  among  the  minor  poems  of  the  English  language.  *  *  *  Especial  care 
has  also  been  taken  to  give  every  poem  entire  and  unmutilated,  as  well  as  in  the  most  authentic 
form  which  could  be  procured." — Extract  from  Preface. 

•'  This  work  is  an  immense  improvement  on  all  its  predecessors.  The  editor,  who  is  one  of  the 
most  erudite  of  scholars,  and  a  man  of  excellent  taste,  has  arranged  his  selections  under  ten  heads, 
namely  :  Poems  of  Nature,  of  Childhood,  of  Friendship,  of  Love,  of  Ambition,  of  Comedy,  of  Trage- 
dy and  Sorrow,  of  the  Imagination,  of  Sentiment  and  Reflection,  and  of  Religion.  The  entire 
number  of  poems  given  is  about  two  thousand,  taken  from  the  writings  of  English  and  American 
poets,  and  including  some  of  the  finest  versions  of  poems  from  ancient  and  modern  languages.  The 
selections  appear  to  be  admirably  made,  nor  do  we  think  that  it  -would  be  possible  for  any  one  to 
improve  upon  this  collection." — Boston  Traveller. 

"  Within  a  similar  compass,  there  is  no  collection  of  poetry  in  the  language  that  equals  this  In 
variety,  in  richness  of  thought  and  expression,  and  of  poetic  imagery." — Worcester  Palladium, 

"This  is  a  choice  collection  of  the  finest  poems  in  the  English  language,  and  supplies  in  some 
measure  the  place  of  an  extensive  library.  Mr.  Dana  has  done  a  capital  service  in  bringing  within 
the  reach  of  all  the  richest  thoughts  that  grace  our  standard  poetical  literature." — Chicago  Press. 

"  A  work  that  has  long  been  required,  and,  we  are  convinced  from  the  selections  made,  and  the 
admirable  manner  in  which  they  are  arranged,  will  commend  itself  at  once  to  the  public."— De- 
troit Advertiser. 

"  Never  was  a  book  more  appropriately  named.  By  the  exercise  cf  a  sound  and  skilful  judg- 
ment, and  a  thorough  familiarity  with  the  poetical  productions  of  all  nations,  the  compiler  of  this 
work  has  succeeded  in  combining,  within  the  space  of  a  single  volume,  nearly  every  poem  of  estab- 
lished worth  and  compatible  length  in  the  EngHsh  language." — Philadelphia  Journal. 

"  It  gives  us  in  an  elegant  and  compact  form  such  a  body  of  verse  as  can  be  found  in  no  other 
volume  or  series  of  volumes.  It  is  by  far  the  most  complete  collection  that  has  ever  been  made  of 
English  lyrical  poetry." — Boston  Transcript. 

"  Among  the  similar  works  which  have  appeared  we  do  not  hesitate  to  give  this  the  highest 
place." — Providence  Journal. 

"  We  are  acquainted  with  no  selections  which,  in  point  of  completeness  and  good  taste,  excel 
the  '  Household  Book  of  Poetry.' " — Northwestern  Home  Journal. 

"It  is  almost  needless  to  say  that  it  is  a  mine  of  poetic  wealth."— Boston  Post, 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 


NOW    COMPLETE. 


A  POPULAR  DICTIONARY  OF  GENERAL  KNOWLEDGE. 

EDITED   BT 

GEOEGE  RIPLEY  AND  C,  A.  DANA, 
ASSISTED    BT  A  NUMEROUS   BUT   SELECT  CORPS   OP   WEITESS. 


The  design  of  THE  NEW  AMERICAN  CYCLOPEDIA  is  to  furnish  the  great  body  of 
intelligent  readers  in  this  country  with  a  popular  Dictionary  of  General  Knowledge. 

THE  NEW  AMERICAN  CYCLOPEDIA  is  not  founded  on  any  European  model  ;  in  its 
plan  and  elaboration  it  is  strictly  original,  and  strictly  American.  Many  of  the  writers 
employed  on  the  work  have  enriched  it  with  their  personal  researches,  observations, 
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It  is  intended  that  the  work  shall  bear  such  a  character  of  practical  utility  as  to 
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Throughout  its  successive  volumes,  THE  NEW  AMERICAN  CYCLOPEDIA  -will  pre- 
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